Chromodoris daphne from sthn Queensland

January 20, 2009
From: Gary Cobb


Concerning message #22154:

Hi Bill and everyone!
So Chromodoris daphne is the hot topic ... I won't go into feeding but will go into egg masses and mating.
This species is fairly common here and is typically a botton dweller. In all the dive we have seen it, it has been crawling along the silty sandy bottom. It has been found intertidally and at the Mooloolaba rock wall/ledges, which is a shore dive and Old Woman Island and the local reefs.

I collected a couple to see if they would lay eggs and walla ... two animals laid egg masses together at the same time and then went right back to mating! I could not believe my eyes.

Locality: Mooloolaba, Sunshine Coast, intertidal down to 20 m, sthn Queensland, Australia, Pacific Ocean, 20 January 2009. Length: 15-25 mm. Photographer: Gary Cobb.

Cheers
Gary

gary@nudibranch.com.au

Cobb, G.C., 2009 (Jan 20) Chromodoris daphne from sthn Queensland. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/22165

Thanks Gary,

It's nice to get more information about your southern Queensland fauna, which is a mixture of typical tropical Pacific and the endemic fauna restricted to sthn Queensland and New South Wales. Chromodoris daphne is a good example of this endemic fauna. As we can see in the Atkinson's  message [#16171] and yours, the eggs in this species are large enough to suggest the larvae are probably not free-swimming, plankton-feeding veliger larvae. They possibly have direct development hatching directly as small crawling slugs, or more likely they have lecithotrophic larvae, which are non-feeding veliger larvae which spend only a small time in the plankton bwfore settling down as crawling slugs. Hopefully your egg coils will survive and give us a few clues on their development type.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2009 (Jan 20). Comment on Chromodoris daphne from sthn Queensland by Gary Cobb. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/22165

Factsheet

Chromodoris daphne

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