Mexichromis kempfi from Little Cayman, BWI
November 26, 2008
From: Deborah Chambers
Howdy, Bill,
I think this is a pair of Mexichromis kempfi that I photographed on Little Cayman Island in October 2008.
These are not real common on Little Cayman (or at least they're hard to spot!), so I thought I would submit the photo. It's the first time I've seen two of them together.
Locality: Little Cayman Island, 15 meters, Cayman Islands, BWI, Caribbean Sea, 19 October 2008, Spur and groove coral formations. Length: 20 mm. Photographer: Deborah Chambers.
Cheers,
Deborah Chambers
witw_deborah@yahoo.com
Chambers, D. S., 2008 (Nov 26) Mexichromis kempfi from Little Cayman, BWI. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/22075Dear Deb,
Thanks for these photos. As you will see from earlier messages, these Caribbean animals with a whitish background colour are rather different from the darker blue animals from Brazil on which the species was based. I suspect we have enough intermediate colour forms to show that they are all colour forms of one species, but as Vinicius Padula suggested [message #19200], it would be valuable to compare the anatomy of these different forms.
It's intere sting to see another example of animals of M. kempfi following each other in single file like this [see trailing Fact Sheet]. If you do ever see this species laying eggs it would be nice to have a photo to compare with the one on Vinicius Padula's message. If the eggs of the Caribbean animals are different from those of the Brazilian animals, it would indicate we are probably dealing with more than one species.
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman
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