Orange-spotted and predatory, usually found on or beside the sea hare it is eating.
A soft dorid to about 7 cm, translucent white to pale cream and scattered with orange to red-orange spots over the whole back and the sides of the foot, with an orange-tinged gill plume standing well back on the body and orange-marked rhinophores. The body is high and rounded rather than flat, and the mantle skirt is reduced, so the animal has none of the overhanging edge of a typical dorid. That reduced mantle places the genus.
Gymnodoris are predators on other sea slugs. This species is associated with sea hares, and animals are commonly found in contact with a Stylocheilus or Bursatella on shallow weedy sand, sometimes with the prey still moving. Feeding is direct and quick, and the predator does not leave once it has started.
The practical consequence for finding it is that the ground with the sea hares is the ground to search, which on a muck site means the shallow weedy sand and algal mats rather than the open slope. Recorded from about 1 to 25 m, and often in only a few metres of water.
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.
