Okenia kendi
Gosliner, 2004

Order: NUDIBRANCHIA
Suborder: DORIDINA
Superfamily: ANADORIDOIDEA
Family: Goniodorididae

DISTRIBUTION

This species is known from Luzon Island, Philippines, and Sulawesi, Indonesia .

PHOTO

Upper: Sepok Point, Maricaban Island, Batangas Province, Luzon, Philippines. Lower: SEM of radula showing lateral teeth on right side (CASIZ 085883). Scale bar = 23 µm. [Photos from Gosliner, 2004 with permission].

The animal is wide and dorso-ventrally flattened with a well-developed mantle edge bearing eight elongate papillae along each side. There is also a single dorsal papilla in the midline halfway between the gills and the rhinophores. The papillae are very long, at least as long as the width of the mantle, and become wider and somewhat flattened towards the tip. The rhinophores are similarly shaped and even longer. The gills are arranged in three clusters of two or three gills, one in the midline just in front of the anus, and the other two, one on each side of the anus.

The body color is a translucent yellowish white with a pattern of opaque brown and white. There is a broad brown band down the dorsal midline running from in front of the rhinophores to behind the gills, tapering posteriorly into a thin brown median line running almost to the posterior tip of the foot.  There is a gap around the base of the mid-dorsal papillae and the gills. The brown band is outlined with an opaque white border. The gills, mantle papillae and rhinophores are all dark brown. The living animals are known to reach 30 mm in length. It is reported to feed on encrusting bryozoans (Gosliner, Behrens, and Williams, 1996).

• Gosliner, T.M, Behrens, D. & Willams, G. (1996) Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific. Sea Challengers, Monterey, California. 314 pp., 1103 pls.
• Gosliner, T. M. (2004) Phylogenetic Systematics of Okenia, Sakishimaia, Hopkinsiella and Hopkinsia (Nudibranchia: Goniodorididae) with descriptions of new species from the tropical Indo-Pacific. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, 55: 125-161

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