Re: Thorunna punicea? from South Africa

March 22, 2007
From: Colin Ogden

Concerning message #19718:

Dear Bill,
I do have some better pictures of the sponge and one pic that shows more evidence of feeding. I hope these will be clear enough. I have had a closer look at the pictures of the more flattened animal in my original message and they do suggest that the gills are waving in clockwise and anticlockwise directions. This at first I thought was a result of the surge.

Locality: Sodwana Bay, 22 metres, South Africa, Indian, Oct 2006, reef. Length: 25mm. Photographer: Colin Ogden.

Regards
Colin

scubaco@iafrica.com

Ogden C. M., 2007 (Mar 22) Re: Thorunna punicea? from South Africa. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/19739

Thanks Colin,

Yes this is definitely a sponge. When I first looked I thought it was an  irciniid, which are a family of sponges which often incorporate sand grains in their structure, but looking more closely at places where the slug seems to have been eating, it looks like the sponge is only a very thin layer over the underlying rock. The sponge is almost transparent so the sandy rock shows right through the sponge tissue. I am pretty sure the sponge is a species of Dysidea, which is a nice find as we have no other record of this species feeding.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2007 (Mar 22). Comment on Re: Thorunna punicea? from South Africa by Colin Ogden. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/19739

Factsheet

Thorunna punicea

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