The sea hares with wing-like flaps along the back, raised and used to swim by some species.
Sea hares with a soft, arched body, two rolled rhinophores standing up behind a pair of flattened oral tentacles, and a pair of large parapodial flaps rising from the sides of the foot and meeting over the back. Under those flaps is a shallow mantle cavity and a small flat internal shell. Colour runs olive, green, red-brown and grey, mottled and often marked with pale rings or dark blotches, and it tracks the algae the animal has been eating.
The parapodia are what separates the genus from the other sea hares on these sites. Dolabella auricularia is a heavy truncated wedge with the rear cut off flat, Bursatella leachii is covered in long branched papillae and shows no shell, and Stylocheilus striatus is small, lined and furred. In this genus the flaps are large, thin-edged and mobile, they can be lifted clear of the body, and in several species they are flapped alternately so that the animal swims a few metres before settling again.
It grazes macroalgae in sheltered shallow water, on weed-covered rubble, sand and seagrass, and animals gather where the weed is. Sea hares are simultaneous hermaphrodites and mate in chains. A disturbed animal releases purple ink from one gland and an opaque white secretion from another. Species in the region are separated on the shell and on details of the mantle, and a photograph of a grazing animal generally stops at the genus. Recorded from the intertidal to about 15 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.
