Chromodoris colemani Rudman, 1982
25mm

Relatively rare in the Marshall Islands, this species is most often found on lagoon pinnacles but can live along interisland reefs as well. We have found maybe 15 specimens, three at Utirik Atoll and the rest at Kwajalein. Several at Kwajalein were under one of my "nudibranch collectors." These are sheets of corrugated aluminum that have blown into the water during storms and been encrusted on the undersides with a good growth of sponges and other sessile organisms. These aluminum sheets seem to be favored by a number of sponge feeding chromodorids. Several months after a storm at Enewetak blew many of these sheets onto the shallow lagoon reefs, populations of many nudibranch species bloomed. Specimens of C. colemani in the Marshalls have ranged up to about 25mm in length.

The specimen below is one of three found at Utirik Atoll in the northern Marshall Islands.

The Kwajalein specimen below appeared to be feeding on the lilac-colored sponge.

The individual below was found with its egg mass, deposited with the wide edge flat on a red sponge, on 22 July 2013.

Animals with varying colors and patterns have been attributed to this species from other parts of the Pacific. While molecular data determined by Layton et al (2018) do indicate those various forms are all indeed one species, I'm not sure if this particular color pattern was verified. Certainly the Marshall lslands specimens closely match the figure of the material Rudman (1982) used to describe the species. His figure from that paper is below.

Created 14 December 2005
Updated 24 June 2020

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