Hypselodoris olgae
Ortea & Bacallado, 2007

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

DISTRIBUTION

Caribbean

PHOTO

Little Cayman, Cayman Ids, Caribbean. [on a vertical section of Bloody Bay Wall, at 16m]. Jan 19, 2002. Photo: Rod Dickson.

This species has previously been called Hypselodoris sp. 5 on the Forum.

Apart from the general colour pattern, distinctive features of the colour pattern include the white rhinophore clubs with dark blue tips and dark blue stalks, the simple white gills edged in blue, and the regular pattern of dark patches down the mantle, including the pair midway down the mantle which form a break in the white band around the mantle edge. The authors report specimens from the sponge Dysidea etheria and note that the eggs are relativley large, suggesting that it is possibly a direct developer.

This animal is almost certainly the same as the one in Humann's book [Hypselodoris sp. p235]. It is also identical to the animal Thompson, (1980) identified from Jamaica as Hypselodoris bayeri but as Thompson notes, his animal had considerable colour differences from H. bayeri as originally described by Marcus & Marcus 1967 from Florida. True H. bayeri has deep blue rhinophores and a series of yellow longitudinal lines down the back. It also lacks the break in the mantle border halfway down each side. Thompson reports numerous live specimens creeping over coral sand near Discovery Bay and Port Royal (16-30 mm long). He twice found them feeding on a dark brown encrusting sponge.

This is one of a group of similarly coloured species from the Caribbean and west Atlantic which are still not satisfactorily resolved. For example this species was misidentified as H. marci  in the latest revision on this colour group (Ortea, Valdes & Garcia-Gomez, 1997). 

• Ortea, J. & Bacallado, J. J. (2007) Descripción de una nueva especie de Hypselodoris Stimpson, 1855 (Mollusca: Nudibranchia: Chromodorididae) nombrada en homenaje a Olga Ucelay Sabina. Revista Academia Canaria de las Ciencias, 18, 53-60.
• Ortea, J., Valdés, A. & García-Gómez, J. C. (1996) Review of the atlantic species of the Family Chromodorididae (Mollusca: Nudibranchia) of the blue chromatic group. Avicennia, Supplement 1: 1-160.
• Thompson, T.E. (1980) Jamaican opisthobranch molluscs: II. Journal of Molluscan Studies, 46(1): 74-99.
  

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