A slug covered in cerata with a low ridged crest between the rhinophores, feeding on bryozoans.
A slug to about 3 cm whose back and sides are covered in closely set cerata, each one containing a branch of the digestive gland that shows through as an orange or brown core, and each usually tipped in white or in a pale iridescent blue. The body beneath is translucent. At a glance the animal reads as an aeolid, and it is regularly filed as one.
The character that separates it is a caruncle, a small ridged or folded crest standing on the head between the two rhinophores. No aeolid has it. The cerata also work differently: there are no cnidosacs at their tips, so the animal does not store and reuse stinging cells from its prey, which aeolids taken from hydroids and soft corals do.
Feeding is on bryozoans, and the animals are found on the branching and encrusting colonies that grow on rubble, dead shell and jetty structure rather than on open sediment. Several species occur in the region, they are separated on the colour of the cerata and the shape of the caruncle, and photographs are often not enough to take a record past the genus. Recorded from about 5 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.
