A firm dorid studded with blunt tubercles, found on the calcareous sponges it feeds on.
A firm-bodied dorid to about 3 cm, the whole upper surface covered in blunt rounded or club-shaped tubercles that give it the texture of a small piece of encrusting growth. Ground colour runs from near black with white or yellow tubercles through grey and cream to plain yellow. The rhinophores are club-shaped and sit in raised sheaths.
The gills are the character that settles the genus. They are not retractile and do not form a circular plume; instead there are three small gills at the back, each flanked by a pair of enlarged tubercles that fold over and shield them. On a slug of this shape and firmness that arrangement is enough on its own, and it separates the genus from the phyllidiids, which carry no dorsal gill at all.
Feeding is on calcareous sponges, the hard white and cream sponges that grow in shaded rubble, under ledges and on the sides of dead coral, and the animals are found by working over that sponge rather than by searching open ground. Colour is often close to the host. Recorded from about 3 to 30 m.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
