Haminoea orteai Talavera, Murillo and Templado, 1987

Salvador, Xavier, Fernández-Vilert, Robert & Moles, Juan, 2022, Sea slug night fever: 39 new records of elusive heterobranchs in the western Mediterranean (Mollusca: Gastropoda), Journal of Natural History 56 (5 - 8), pp. 265-310 : 269-270

Haminoea orteai Talavera, Murillo and Templado, 1987

( Figure 2 (b,c))

Material examined

Cala Maset caves, Sant Feliu de Guíxols ( Spain), 41°47 ʹ 10.5”N, 3°2 ʹ 44.6”E, 16 October 2017, 0.6 m depth,>40 spcs, juveniles, adults and egg masses, L = 2–15 mm; 31 December 2017, 1.2 m depth, 3 spcs, juveniles and adults, L = up to 15 mm; Le Ponton, Étang de Thau, Sète ( France), 43°25 ʹ 28.5”N, 3°42 ʹ E, 3 November 2017, 1.4 m depth, 2 spcs, adults, L = 20 mm; Fòrum pools, Barcelona ( Spain), 41°24 ʹ 34.5”N, 2°13 ʹ 36.8”E, 25 November 2017, 1.7 m depth, 2 spcs, adults and egg masses, L = 20 mm; 27 April 2018, 0.8 m depth, 1 spc ., adult, L = 10 mm; l’Espigó , Roses ( Spain), 42°15 ʹ 39.8”N, 3°10 ʹ 26.8”E, 28 February 2020, 0.8 m depth, 5 spcs, adults and egg masses, L = 25 mm .

External morphology

Shell external, translucent, background colour light brown to grey with dark brown, white and orange punctuations surrounded by small dark red points. Parapodia lighter in colour. Head lighter in colour, area around eyes pigmented.

Ecology

Specimens were found crawling on calcareous rocks with green algae of undetermined species during night samplings. Egg masses were observed in November and juveniles in December 2017. Egg masses elongated, forming a ‘C’, with white eggs ( Figure 1 (c)).

Distribution

Azores, Atlantic Spanish coast: Canary Islands; Mediterranean Spanish coast: Andalucía, Levantine coast ( Cervera et al. 2004), Catalonia (this study); Mediterranean French coast ( Garabedian et al. 2017; this study); Greece and Italy ( Garabedian et al. 2017).

Remarks

Haminoea species in the Mediterranean are understudied ( Crocetta et al. 2015; Micaroni et al. 2018) and, thus, all morphological characters that may be useful in distinguishing species are not always clear. One visible distinguishing feature of this species is the presence of a pigmented periocular area. The presence of small orange dots under the shell surrounded by smaller dots of dark purple or black colour, forming a flower pattern, was found in all studied specimens.

Family PHILINIDAE Gray, 1850 (1815)

Genus Philine Ascanius, 1772

Figures

Figure 1. Distribution map of the western Mediterranean coast showing the main sampling stations. There should be only one image, currently there is a duplicate

Figure 2. Photographs of live Cephalaspidea species: (a) The alien Haloa japonica. (b) Haminoea orteai. (c) Egg mass of Haminoea orteai. (d) Philine catena. The Nudibranchia species: (e) Aegires palensis. (f) White morphotype of Aegires sublaevis. (g) Aldisa smaragdina on top of the sponge Phorbas topsenti. (h) Okenia longiductis on the bryozoan Amathia verticillata.