Chromodoris quadricolor & black sponge

July 2, 2008
From: Kamal El Tawil


Dear Bill,

Another case of Chromodoris quadricolor feeding on black sponge ! In the past year or so several cases of C. quadricolor feeding on this black sponge were reported in contradiction to belief that they only fed on a red sponge. Would you say such cases were not observed through the years or are these slugs undergoing a change in their feeding habits ?

Locality: Habili Ali, St. John's reefs, 15 metres, Egypt, Red Sea, 21 June 2008, Submerged offshore reef - wall. Length: 40 mms. Photographer: Kamal El Tawil.

Kind regards,
Kamal el Tawil
www.coralworld.net

kamal@coralworld.net

El Tawil, K., 2008 (Jul 2) Chromodoris quadricolor & black sponge. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/21662

Dear Kamal,

Thanks for this interesting observation. When you first sent photos of C. quadricolor on this blackish sponge [message #20150] I explained why I thought it was an interesting find - although anomalous - so it is really good to get further reports, as this shows that what could have been a strange anomaly is probably part of the species' normal diet.

To answer your question about whether it is perhaps changing its diet. I suspect that these grey-black thorectid sponges are part of its usual diet. I suspect the reason we only had reports of it on red sponges [Negombata spp but often misidentified as Latrunculia spp] was because these sponges often occur in an erect branching form, are brightly coloured, and with a few Chromodoris quadricolor crawling on them present an irresistible photo opportunity.  Hopefully my constant, if not irritating, requests for photos of animals 'doing things' is beginning to bear fruit, and shows that the eye of a photographer is just as useful as the eye of a trained scientist when it comes to recording new feeding observations.

Interestingly, when you look at the feeding in the Chromodorididae as a whole, it is the choice of the red sponge by C. quadricolor, which is anomalous . Most chromodorids feed on sponges of the Dictyoceratida and Dendroceratida, while the red sponge belongs in the unrelated Poecilosclerida. The link between the grey-black sponge, which is a dictyoceratid, and the red sponge, is that they both contain a unique group of molecules called latrunculins which C. quadricolor stores in its mantle glands for defensive purposes. We could hypothesise that those chromodorids, such as C. quadricolor, which feed on these red poecilosclerid sponges, are expanding their food choice from their 'ancestral' food sponges, to other sponges with the same or similar chemicals.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2008 (Jul 2). Comment on Chromodoris quadricolor & black sponge by Kamal El Tawil. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/21662

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