Trapania miltabrancha Gosliner & Fahey, 2008
15mm

Trapania miltibrancha is known in the Marshalls from a a couple of specimens. A 10mm specimen found and photographed by Marissa and Peter Brown on orange sponge on a Kwajalein lagoon coralhead at a depth of about 12m is in the first two photos below. While the animal has darker lateral processes than other published photos we have seen of T. miltabrancha, it seems to match in all other respects and we have no real doubts about the identification. As is common with species of Trapania, the sponge where the specimen was found was covered by a field of flowery entoprocts that the nudibranch was eating.

A more distant view shows the entoprocts growing over a wide area of the sponge.

One more specimen was found on red sponge covered with entoprocts that coated a colony of dead Millepora fire coral on top of a southern Kwajalein Atoll lagoon pinnacle at a depth of about 6m. Although not measured, it appeared to be at least 15mm long.

Created 15 February 2015
Updated 16 July 2016

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