Aplysia cervina from Brazil

January 31, 2007
From: Carlos Meirelles

Dear Dr. Bill,

We´re having many doubts about the ID of this Aplysia. It was collected in a estuarine area, dying in a exposed sand bank during the low tide. We observed that this animal doesn't release the purple ink. It feeds on Ulva and flaps its wing-like 'parapodia' to swim. Could it be an A. juliana?

Locality: Estuary , Ceará State, Northeast Brazil, Atlantic Ocean, 25 January 2007, sand bank during the low tide. Length: 60 mm. Photographer: Carlos Meirelles.

Regards
Carlos

cameirelles@gmail.com

Meirelles, C., 2007 (Jan 31) Aplysia cervina from Brazil. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/19350

Note added 9 Feb 2007: see message #19409 showing this is a colour form of Aplysia brasiliana.

Dear Carlos,
I think this is a very interesting find. Although A. juliana doesn't produce red/purple ink there are a number of reasons why I don't think this is that species. The most important is that the parapodia join posteriorly, quite high above the body whereas in your animal they don't join and in fact join the body posteriorly very low down. Also I have never seen a A. juliana with spots like this. I am pretty sure you animal is Aplysia cervina, which can have numerous dark brown spots on each side, as in your animal.  At present we don't have this species on the Forum, and I can't recall having seen a photo of the living animal before. There is a chance that A. cervina is a colour form of A.brasiliana but in Eales' major revision of species (1960) she considers them different and mentions that in A, cervina the rhinophores have a deep slit almost to the base, which can be seen in your photo. In A. brasiliana the rhinophores are quite small and the slit goes about halfway.

This raises your observation that the animal didn't produce purple ink, although A. cervina has a purple gland. Sea Hares need to feed on red algae to produce their characteristic red/purple ink. They can be effectively 'de-inked' if fed a diet of green algae. So perhaps your animal had been washed ashore, far from its normal habitat, and had only green algae [Ulva] to feed on.

Another mystery is why this species seems to be so rare, most reports being of single specimens. The Marcuses, who despite years of collecting around Sao Paulo, only ever found a single specimen, discuss its rarity (1957) but they have no ideas on why it is rarely found. You mention that it 'flaps its wing-like 'parapodia' to swim'. Do you mean you saw it swimming or do you mean it flaps its parapodia as though it was trying to swim? The reason I ask is that I can find no reference to A. cervina swiming.

  • Eales, N. B. (1960)  Revision of the world species of Aplysia (Gastropoda, Opisthobranchia). Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Zoology, 5(10): 267-404.
  • Marcus, E. and Marcus, E. (1957) Notes on Aplysia. Boletim do Instituto Oceanografico, 8: 3-22.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2007 (Jan 31). Comment on Aplysia cervina from Brazil by Carlos Meirelles. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/19350

Factsheet

Aplysia brasiliana

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