Chromodoris regalis
(Ortea, Caballer & Moro, 2001)

Order: NUDIBRANCHIA
Suborder: DORIDINA
Superfamily: EUDORIDOIDEA
Family: Chromodorididae

DISTRIBUTION

Caribbean

PHOTO

Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, Caribbean Sea. Approx depth of 10 meters,  25 mm in length. 02 January 2004. Photo: Ellen Muller. 

Translucent with a pinkish tinge to the body and mantle. There is also a fine network of reddish lines all over the mantle. The mantle is also covered in small rounded white bumps, which are more numerous in some specimens than in others suggesting they are perhaps small skin glands. In the attached photo these glands can only be seen near the mantle edge where they merge into the band of mantle glands at the mantle edge. There is a thin milky-yellow band bordering the mantle and another around the foot.

The rhinophores are translucent pinkish with a thin reddish edge to the lamellae. The essentially simple gills are translucent pinkish with the inner and outer edge (rachis) edged in red. In some cases a few gills may be thick enough to have a double red line along the inside edge. It is reported to grow to 34 mm length.

It was originally placed in the genus Noumea, but as Valdes, Hamann, Behrens & DuPont (2006) suggest, its anatomy is more like that of a species of Chromodoris.

• Ortea, J., Caballer, M., and Moro, L. (2001) A new species of the genus Noumea Risbec, 1928 (Mollusca: Nudibranchia) of the Caribbean reef of Costa Rica, described to commemorate the fifth Century of its discovery (in Spanish). Avicennia 14: 1-6.
• Valdes, A., Hamann, J., Behrens D.W. & A. DuPont (2006) Caribbean Sea Slugs

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