Millimetre aeolids with swollen banded cerata, found by working over a hydroid colony.
Small aeolids, most between five and fifteen millimetres, with a translucent body and two rows of cerata that are swollen along their length and often constricted below the tip, so each one reads as a small club or a string of beads rather than a smooth finger. The cerata carry rings and patches of pigment, orange, brown, red or white, and the digestive gland shows through as a darker core. The rhinophores are smooth and unadorned.
That last point is the quickest separation from the other small slug found in the same place. Doto has rhinophores set in tall funnel-shaped sheaths and cerata covered in rounded tubercles; Eubranchus has plain rhinophores and cerata that are inflated rather than knobbed. Both are on hydroids and both are the same size, so the two are regularly confused.
Feeding is on hydroids, taking the polyps, and the animal is found by searching a colony stem by stem rather than by looking at open ground. Spawn is a short white coil laid on the stem, frequently spotted before the animal. A colony that holds one usually holds several. Recorded from about 3 to 25 m on rubble, rock and jetty structure.
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.
