Hoplodoris estrelyado nudibranch

This cryptically disguised nudibranch (family platydorididae) employs such a complicated color scheme it's hard to tell which end is which. If you look closely, though, the two rhinophores are toward the right and the gill plume is on the left. Despite its large appearance, this shallow water nudibranch is only about two inches long.

Although this species was previously identified here as, and is pictured in the recent 1996 edition of the Helmut Debelius book on nudibranchs and sea snails as Hoplodoris nodulosa, it is actually a newly described species, Hoplodoris estrelyado (Gosliner and Behrens, 1998), as featured on Mike Miller's terrific Slug Site.

The word "estrelyado" means "sunny side up" in Tagalog, the most common native dialect of the Philippines. The visible difference between this species and the similar H. nodulosa is the lack of the "egg white" around the yellow "egg yolk" spots.

An updated version of the Debelius book is due out in November 1998, and will reflect name changes of various nudibranchs already featured. In the world of nudibranch identification, new papers are constantly being published to redescribe known specimens or identify new species. For the latest species name updates as of October '98, a good web source of information is the No. 3 edition of Australian Nudibranch News, published by Wayne Ellis and available via a link from his home page.

identification: Hoplodoris estrelyado