Okenia rhinorma - another new Okenia

December 10, 2007
From: Bill Rudman

While preparing a description of the new pink species of Okenia [see message #21273] I decided to name a specimen I collected in Tanzania 30 years ago. As I have mentioned previously, it is not a good idea to name new species on the basis of single specimens, but considerable work has been done on this genus in recent years and no other species approaches it in shape and colour. Photographs from Binyamin & Shulamit Koretz [message #13354] of the same species from the Red Sea convinced me that this was a good species, and we now had sufficient information on its shape, colour and anatomy to ensure that it could be recognised again. The description is published in Zootaxa.

I have named it Okenia rhinorma. For classical scholars, you won't find 'rhinorma' in a Latin or Greek dictionary, it is a manufactured name from 'rhinophore' and 'enormous' in recognition of the size of rhinophores in this species, which you can see very clearly in the Koretz's message. Unfortunately in my photos, the rhinophores are retracted as I was unable to photograph the animal until shortly before it died.

Locality:  Bongoyo Island, off Msasani Bay, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Coll: G.H. Brown, 7 November 1976. 11 mm long alive, AM C443912 [Holotype] Photo: Bill Rudman.

• Rudman, W.B. (2007) Two new species of Okenia (Gastropoda: Nudibranchia: Goniodorididae) from eastern Australia and Tanzania. Zootaxa, 1657: 57–67.

Best wishes
Bill Rudman.

Rudman, W.B., 2007 (Dec 10) Okenia rhinorma - another new Okenia. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/21284

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