A small sea hare that lives on cyanobacteria mats, and usually in numbers.
A small sea hare to about 6 cm, tan to olive with fine dark brown lines running the length of the body, scattered blue-ringed black spots, and a covering of small branched papillae that gives it a furred outline. Two rolled rhinophores stand at the front. Stylocheilus longicauda is the close relative and is very similar, with a longer drawn-out tail; the two have been confused in the literature for decades and both occur in the region.
It grazes cyanobacterial mats, chiefly Lyngbya majuscula, on silt, dead coral and weed, and is usually found in groups on the mat rather than singly. It concentrates the cyanobacterium’s toxins in its own tissues, and those are the same compounds behind the skin irritation that contact with Lyngbya itself causes.
Recorded from the intertidal to about 10 m. Where the mats are, the animals are, and neither is evenly distributed along a site.
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.
