A third Philine in California

September 8, 1998
From: Terry Gosliner

Dear Bill,
Thanks for your messages and all the information regarding Philine.
Things have taken an interesting twist here. Michelle, Rebecca Price (a former intern who has been working with me on Philine) and I had a go at the Bodega material.
You were basically correct in drawing the prostate as a tight tube for the Bodega "auriformis", but the ejaculatory duct is longer in all our material than you drew it for California specimens. I looked at some larger specimens from Los Angeles and Morro Bay and the prostate is much more well developed as in your New Zeland specimen. All the California material has a very distinct penial papilla with the sac. It is conical with a distinct apical shield that is shiny compared the rest of the muscular papilla.

The situation with the P. orientalis material is interesting as well. I compared the Bodega specimens with specimens of orientalis I have from Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Bodega material closely matches the Taiwan and Malaysian material, but has a consistently different penial papilla to the Hong Kong specimens. It appears that there are two SE Asian species, but which is orientalis is open to question. P. orientalis was originally described from the Philippines from shells only. We have no Philine with that kind of plates from the Philippines.

I thought I would examine some additional smaller specimens from Tomales Bay, just South of Bodega. These were basically like P. orientalis only smaller. Upon looking at them carefully, they are identical in shell sculpture, gizzard and penial morphology to P. japonica. It appears that we have at least a third introduced species in California waters. Some other material from San Francisco Bay looks much more like P. aperta from South Africa, but we need to look at it more closely. Things get curiouser and curiouser. all the best,

Terry

Terry Gosliner

tgosliner@casnotes1.calacademy.org

Gosliner, T., 1998 (Sep 8) A third Philine in California. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/230

Thanks Terry, its a pity species of Philine don't have some nice identifying colour patterns .. Bill.

Factsheet

Philine spp.

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