A large, rigid yellow dorid marked with black lines, found on the sponge it eats.
A large dorid of the family Aegiridae, reaching about 15 cm, bright lemon to banana yellow and marked with fine irregular black lines that run mainly lengthwise. The body is firm and rather rigid rather than soft, the mantle margin raised into a low ridge, and the rhinophores and gill are the same yellow as the body. Notodoris gardineri is the species most often confused with it and is a deeper orange-yellow with heavier, more broken black markings; N. citrina is plain yellow with no black at all. Some sources place the genus in Aegires, and the species is occasionally listed as Aegires minor.
Feeds on calcareous sponges of the genus Leucetta, and is very often found sitting directly on a yellow sponge of almost exactly its own colour, which is where to look for it rather than on open substrate. Egg masses are laid on or beside the sponge as a yellow ribbon. Recorded from about 5 to 30 m across the tropical Indo-West Pacific. Large, static and brightly coloured, so it is an easy subject once found — the finding depends on the sponge, and a site with no Leucetta will have no Notodoris.
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.
