Aplysia punctata from Croatia
March 4, 2005
From: Andrej Jaklin
Dear Bill,
I'm sending you three pictures of presumably Aplysia punctata. All the characteristics fit to the descriptions found in literature except one tiny detail. All three specimens collected bear small dark brown spots with white centre, which make them eye like. And that should be the characteristic of another species, A. oculifera from the Red Sea.
Moreover, I found the same spots on some pictures of A. parvula from Erwin's MEDSLUG site! That raises some questions in my head and really would like to see your comment, as well as from others on the Forum.
Locality: Vrsar, Croatia, Northern Adriatic. Depth: 2 m. Length: approx 60 mm. 22 Feb 2005. Caulerpa racemosa settlement. Photographer: Dr. Bojan Hamer [in aquarium]
Best regards,
AJ
jakin@cim.irb.hr
Jaklin, A., 2005 (Mar 4) Aplysia punctata from Croatia. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/13270Dear Andrej,
Sea Hares can at times be quite difficult to identify from photos. Both European species, A. depilans and A. punctata have the parapodia joined quite high at the back of the animal, as does A. parvula. In A. oculifera the parapodia are not really joined posteriorly. If your animal has a large opening or foramen in the mantle, through which the shell can be seen, then its most likely to be A. punctata or possibly A. parvula. See my earlier comments [message #1435] on the difficulty of separating those two species.
Concerning 'eye spots'. Other species do sometimes have some. For example the photos of Aplysia parvula from Senegal [message #10382] show some good eye spots. This doesn't really answer your question. I think the best way to identify species of Aplysia is to become familiar with your local populations. Once you have an idea of expected colour variablity, it is usually much simpler to identify each population to a species. I realise that it is always possible that an unusual interloper will appear, but if you know the local species reasonably well, the stray one will be fairly obvious.
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman
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