Tenellia adspersa from the Baltic Sea
January 12, 2010
From: Thorsten Walter
Dear Bill,
I am the owner of a small local aquarium/museum located at the Baltic Sea in Lübeck-Travemünde, northern Germany. During our field trips with school clases we sometimes found small nudibranchs, inside the harbour in front of our station. The salinity of the water is normally 1.0-1.5 psu.
Locality: harbour, less than 1 meter, Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, Luebeck, Baltic Sea, 30 March 2009, On Mytilus edulis covered with hydroids and polyps of Aurelia aurita. Length: 4 mm. Photographer: T. Walter.
This is my second message. I have tentatively identified this species as Tenellia adspersa.
It would be great if you or somebody else can help me with the species identification.
Best regards
Thorsten Walter
info@ostseestation.de
Walter, T., 2010 (Jan 12) Tenellia adspersa from the Baltic Sea. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/23078
Dear Thorsten,
yes this is Tenellia adspersa. In your second photo, which shows the animal from underneath, the large white spheres are possibly the eggs, or perhaps the ovaries. As you will see in an earlier message, this species has two types of larval development. It can produce a few large eggs which hatch out as small crawling young, or it can produce more smaller eggs which develop into swimming veliger larvae, which do not feed in the plankton after hatching but quickly settle on the bottom and turn into a crawling slug. This short free-swimming larval stage may be an advantage for some populations, as it allows the young to move further from the parental home.
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman
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