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/22165Thanks 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
Related messages
-
Re: Chromodoris daphne from sthn Queensland
From: Denis Riek, January 23, 2009 -
Re: Chromodoris daphne feeding observation [2]
From: Leanne and David Atkinson, January 22, 2009 -
Re: Chromodoris daphne feeding observation [2]
From: Leanne & David Atkinson, January 19, 2009 -
Chromodoris daphne feeding observation [2]
From: Bill Rudman, November 27, 2006 -
Chromodoris daphne feeding
From: Leanne & David Atkinson, November 27, 2006 -
Chromodoris daphne laying eggs
From: Leanne & David Atkinson, March 27, 2006 -
Octopus & Chromodoris daphne
From: Sean P. McMahon, November 29, 2002 -
Re: Chromodoris daphne
From: Wayne Ellis, January 18, 2001 -
Chromodoris daphne - where does it live?
From: Des Paroz, January 5, 2001