Almost entirely transparent, with only the gut contents visible. Hard to see even when pointed out.
Almost entirely transparent, and what you actually see is not the body but the cream-white network of digestive gland tubules showing through it — the usual description is a tangle of string or mucus caught on the bottom. Size figures disagree by a factor of five: the type material is about 12 mm preserved and live animals are cited at up to 60 mm. Nudibranchs contract hard in fixative, so both figures may be right, and neither should be quoted alone. The character that identifies it is the cerata: four per side, wedge-shaped and flattened rather than cylindrical, and shed easily at the base. That separates it from the externally similar Melibe bucephala and M. engeli. Described only in 2012 and named for Neville Coleman, who found it in 2008.
Melibe are strange nudibranchs. They have lost the radula altogether and feed by throwing out a large expandable fringed hood over the bottom like a net, closing it on small crustaceans and swallowing them whole. What this particular species eats is not settled: dissection recovered shelled snails, while other accounts give Xenia soft coral, and neither is well established. The holotype came from Mabul at 6 to 8 m, embedded in a Briareum colony, and there are records from Lembeh, Komodo and Romblon at around 10 m. Its transparency means it is almost certainly commoner than the records suggest — it is a hard animal to see rather than a rare one.
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.
