Re: Chelidonura sandrana - feeding

January 18, 2003
From: Nils Anthes

Dear Bill,
Thanks for your comments on the Forum concerning food of C. sandrana. We are already on Lizard island, and C. sandrana occurs in almost incredible numbers. Along the beaches many thousands can currently be found. This is of course extremely helpful for our whole project: the slug named after your wife turns out to be a real "beauty" for our investigations!!!

An interesting phenomenon that we find here is that C. sandrana seems to segregate spatially: many pale and relatively small, but sexually mature individuals can be found at one patch. Only 50 meters further down the beach almost purely black individuals, that are on average much larger, can be found. First we were sure to see yet another species of Chelidonura, but in the meantime we are more or less convinced that both are C. sandrana. As I don't think that the species has a 2/year life-cycle, they must all belong to the same generation. Is there anything known that sea slugs can
drastically change their coloration with age?

Concerning coloration, we find all intermediate patterns, ranging from completely blackish (bluish in direct light), over blackish with very few orange spots (like C. punctata), to almost whitish ones with few dark spots. If you are interested, we could send you a whole array of pictures taken in the lab of different colour morphs (and also egg clutches) on a CD-rom at some stage. Concerning the food, I found the information on C. varians very promising. Possibly the flatworms that seem to be a big problem for aquariists could turn out to be a fantastic food source for our purpose. We'll try to get in touch
with these guys.

Anyway, your Forum is really a great deal and has already provided much valuable information for our research project.
Cheers
Nils

anthes@uni-muenster.de

Anthes, N., 2003 (Jan 18) Re: Chelidonura sandrana - feeding. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/8940

Dear Nils,
Glad to hear that you are on Lizard and are having success with C. sandrana. You're very lucky because some times you won't find any. I look forward to photos showing colour variation. Concerning flatworms. Another place to look is sponge and soft coral colonies - sometimes they can be infested with huge numbers of little acoel flatworms - which is probably how they get into aquaria.

Anyway good luck with your project, and thanks for keeping in touch - its nice to have some 'continuing stories'
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2003 (Jan 18). Comment on Re: Chelidonura sandrana - feeding by Nils Anthes . [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/8940

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