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Saturday, June 6, 2020

Looking like a sponge

While doing a little tidepooling this morning, I came across several nudibranch egg ribbons attached to the rock:


When you find egg ribbons, the nudibranch that laid them is often still in the area, so I started scanning to see if I could locate the species that produced these eggs.

I was looking around, noticing coralline algae, sea squirts, sponges, and not finding any nudibranchs, but then I paused.  Something looked a little different here:


Aha!  Two nudibranchs!  They were so transparent and blended in so well with the general background community that I hadn't seen them at first.

Zooming in for a closer look, I realized this isn't a species that we see very often.  Meet Chan's Dorid (Hallaxa chani):


Eric got the best picture (above), where you can see the translucent coloration, bumpy dorsal surface, rhinophores (sensory appendages at the front end) with subtle reddish-brown tips, and an unusual gill plume (that to my eye looks like a little pom-pom). 

Hallaxa chani feeds exclusively on the sponge Halisarca.  It has a more northern distribution, and it's apparently relatively rare at the southern end of its range.

Here are a couple more pictures for the record:




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Truly amazing creatures! Thank you for finding and
photographing them! Never knew about the egg cases...

Alice Chan said...

Ditto Anonymous above.
I like to learn and see new things, and this started my day out perfectly!

Jackie Sones said...

Fun to share these fascinating nudibranchs and their egg ribbons with you! Tomorrow is World Oceans Day, so I'll be posting some more marine species this week. Stay tuned!

:) Jackie