Re: Glossodoris cincta from the Red Sea

January 5, 2007
From: Lior Harari

Concerning message #16937:

Dear Bill,
I've looked at the Glossodoris cincta Fact sheet and it seems to me that the picture in my above message is most similar in color to the Pacific version of the slug (the back is white rather then purple and it has light bluish line around the mantle).

This surprises me, because I would expect a slug from the Red Sea to be related to the Indian ocean version. I would like to hear your opinion on the subject.
Thanks,
Lior.

hararilior@yahoo.com

Harari, L., 2007 (Jan 5) Re: Glossodoris cincta from the Red Sea. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/19076

Dear Lior,
Looking back at your message I should have said something other than just agreeing with your identification. The most important fact to know is that we don't know everything about these animals - in fact we know very little. I have been studying the chromodorids, including Glossodoris, from almost 40 years and I'm still not certain what is going on with the Glossodoris cincta group of species. There are a group of similarly coloured species including G. gregorius, G. pullata, G. plumbea, G. hikuerensis and the colour forms of G. cincta. One of the problems of sorting these species out is the lack of material with good accompanying colour photos. A number of times I have dissected a specimen which I am confident is one species only to find a quite different radular morphology. If you have good colour information on an actual specimen you can link that to the radular information and so start to define a 'species'. Unfortunately often we have preserved specimens which look quite like ' G. cincta' in their preserved state but we have no idea what they look like alive. Unfortunately you can also have two similar looking specimens collected at the same time and preserved together, but only one has been photographed - and there is no sure way to know which preserved specimen is in the photo, if they turn out to be different species.

Photos like yours, although not solving problems, are helping to define the nature of the  problem we still have to solve. I suspect your animal from the Red Sea is not G. cincta but it's my best guess at present.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2007 (Jan 5). Comment on Re: Glossodoris cincta from the Red Sea by Lior Harari. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/19076

Factsheet

Glossodoris cincta

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