Dear Jessica,
There are thousands of different species of sea slugs and they all have their own different life cycles. Have a look at an earlier answer I gave to this question.

Concerning what you are likely to find in Chesapeake Bay. I'm afraid I have no personal experience of that coastline and there is little published information. There is one published paper (Marcus, 1972) I know about which reports 17 species from the bay, but there must surely be many more. If you can get a look at Sherman Bleakney's book on Canada and the Gulf of Maine, that should give you some information. There are also quite a few messages on the Forum from Massachusetts and New York so if you use the SEARCH button on the Forum and search for either of those 2 places you will get lists of messages of animals you would probably find in Chesapeake Bay.

• Marcus, Ev. (1972) Notes on some opisthobranch gastropods from the Bay. Chesapeake Science, 13(4): 300-317.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman.

Dear students of room 13,
I have recently been asked a very similar question by Randol. If you have a look at my answer to that question and the other messages on this page you will find links to other pages on the Forum with the information your are after. Just click on any underlined word and it will take you to a relevant page. The Forum is arranged so that all messages about a particular species or topic are together on a 'page' so it pays to look above and below any message you are reading to find more related messages and information.

Good Luck with your reports. Let me know if you have any more questions.
best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Dear Randol,
I am afraid there is not just one life story for a nudibranch. There are thousands of species and each one has a slightly different story, just as humans are a bit different from chimpanzees, and dogs and elephants etc although we are all mammals. Basically nudibranchs are all hermaphrodites that is they have both a fully functional set of both male and female reproductive organs. When they reach maturity, which can take a few days to a few months in different species, they find a partner and mate. They lay their eggs in an elaborate egg ribbon and then the eggs develop either directly into a small crawling slugs or indirectly into a swimming veliger larvae.

If you have a look at the pages on Life Span and Larvae you will find information and links to other pages which will give you more background information. Be sure to check out the messages and discussions that are found at the botton of each page as that is where you will find much of the information on the Forum. Also go to the General Topics Page and look through the Index.
Good Luck with your school report,
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Dear Andy,

Sorry the page wasn't in the Index. Most of the coral-eating nudibranchs seem to live a fairly perilous life hiding from fish predators and so appear restricted to less exposed parts of coral colonies. Certainly in aquaria where there is no danger from predation, populations of the nudirbanchs can expand rapidly and do destroy whole coral colonies, but I don't think occurs in nature.

Porites colonies can be very large and long-lived and a program of borings from large colonies on the Great Barrier Reef is proving very useful in giving us an idea of climate conditions in northern Australia back thousands of years. When a patch of a colony is eaten the bare space is quickly overgrown by the surrounding tissue.

Your mention of sea anemones living quite long reminds be of studies suggesting a common intertidal anemone in temperate Australia and New Zealand can live to 200 years.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman.

Dear Kevin & Kevin

I hope you are asking about sea slugs not land slugs. Basically not all sea slugs have the same life history.

Most species seem to live for about one year, although the tropical Sea Hare Dolabella auricularia can live for six years in an aquarium and the Antarctic cephalaspidean Philine gibba can live for up to four and a half years in nature. On the other hand there are small nudibranchs, especially those that live and feed on short-lived cnidarian colonies which have extremely short life cycles. For example both the European aeolid Tenellia pallida and the coral-eating tropical aeolid Cuthona poritophages can mature in three weeks, and probably die within two or three months. In the case of these very short-lived species, they need to complete their life-cycle before the colony they live and feed on dies. If they are too slow then they will themselves die from starvation before they can breed.

It is also important to realise that many sea slugs have a free-swimming larval stage so that the off-spring can escape from their parent's dying colony and find a new one of their own. Have a look at the General Topics Index for information on larvae.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman.