A firm brown dorid whose back is a field of low rounded tubercles, on silty rubble.
A firm oval dorid to about 5 cm, the mantle stiffened with spicules and the whole upper surface covered in low rounded or flat-topped tubercles of unequal size. Ground colour runs olive, fawn, red-brown or grey, usually with darker spots or short dark streaks in the spaces between the tubercles, and the mantle skirt is thick and holds its shape rather than rippling. The rhinophores and the gill plume both withdraw into pockets, leaving two small openings on a plain sculptured oval.
Several of the cryptic dorids on the same ground are separated on how the back is built rather than on colour, which varies. Atagema carries a raised ridge running down the midline that this genus does not have; Platydoris is flat, hard and finely granular with no tubercles at all; Asteronotus cespitosus is very much larger and its sculpture is a raised network of ridges rather than separate warts. Where an animal is worn or coated in sediment even those characters can fail, and a fair number of photographs are not identifiable past the family.
Feeds on sponges, and is found on silty rubble, dead coral and the sponge-covered undersides of loose rock, mostly at night. Species in the genus are separated on the spiculation and on internal anatomy, so records from a dive stay at the genus. Recorded from about 3 to 30 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.
