Pleurobranchus weberi? from Western Australia

July 18, 2007
From: Brad Cox

Bill
I have a question regarding  Pleurobranchus weberi. I have looked on the forum for a similar looking Nudibranch but have only found Pleurobranchus weberi. You have in the forum they are rare and known only from Indonesia & the Philippines. Is this the case or is this in fact another species.
Brad

Locality: One Mile Jetty Carnarvon, 6-7 meters, Western Australia , Indian Ocean , 02 October 2005, Muddy sandy Bottom. Length: 200mm. Photographer: Damien Preston .

Damien Preston

outbackcoastdive@westnet.com.au

Cox, B., 2007 (Jul 18) Pleurobranchus weberi? from Western Australia. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/20130

Dear Brad,
Information on any species is only as good as the state of our knowledge, so there is always the chance that you can improve the information on the Forum. That is especially true of geographical distributions.

So I wouldn't be surprised if P. weberi turned up in Western Australia. Your animal certainly looks like P. weberi but its colours are not quite the deep purple and white found in other specimens. However it could be a colour variant. The large compound tubercles in your photo look like those of  Pleurobranchus grandis, but I would need to see a higher resolution photo of typical P. weberi to see what its tubercles were like. I can't be 100% sure, but I think we should tentatively consider it to be P. weberi.
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2007 (Jul 18). Comment on Pleurobranchus weberi? from Western Australia by Brad Cox. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/20130

Factsheet

Pleurobranchus weberi

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