Gymnodoris sp. e234
14mm?

This animal is similar to many other gymnodorids and identification from external characters is difficult. In this species, the anterior end of the body is somewhat V-shaped and fringed with an orange rim. All the animals below look similar in the horseshoe shape of the gills, which are colored bright white along the anterior curve. A 9mm specimen from the Marshalls had a radula with a formula of 27x19.0.19, although it might be better to say 27x18.1.0.1.18 since the innermost tooth was so distinctly different from the rest. The inner tooth is hook-shaped and large, 110 µm in length, and quite a bit larger than the rest of the teeth in the row, which maxed out at about half that length in the first few teeth. One of the items in the diet of this species would appear to be gastropod eggs masses. The gut of the dissected specimen was filled with small, white planospiral shells, each about 300 µm in diameter. In the Marshall Islands, this species is known from at least a dozen specimens (if in fact they are all the same) found at Enewetak and Kwajalein Atolls. Three of those ranged from 8 to 9mm in length, and all were found under dead coral or in Halimeda patches on lagoon reefs and pinnacles at depths of 7 to 10 meters.

The Kwajalein specimen below had only a faint trace of the anterior V-shaped orange margin but otherwise appeared the same.

Created 1 January 2007
Updated 4 January 2022

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