Gymnodoris aurita ( Gould, 1852 )

Souza-Canal, Jade De & Valdés, Ángel, 2025, The genus Gymnodoris Stimpson, 1855 (Mollusca, Nudibranchia) in New Caledonia, with descriptions of eleven new species, Zootaxa 5710 (1), pp. 1-73 : 26

Gymnodoris aurita ( Gould, 1852)

Doris aurita Gould, 1852: 299 , pl. 23, fig. 394. Type locality: “Sandalwood Bay, Feejee Islands” [= Bua Bay , Vanua Levu, Fiji].

Phylogenetic position. Gymnodoris aurita is the most basal member of a clade (PP: 0.95, MLB: 97) including several undescribed species: Gymnodoris cf. alba , Gymnodoris sp. 23, Gymnodoris sp. 31, Gymnodoris sp. W, Gymnodoris sp. X, Gymnodoris sp. Y, and Gymnodoris bricei sp. nov. ( Fig. 1A ). The relationships between this clade and other Gymnodoris clades is unresolved ( Fig. 1A ).

Remarks. Doris aurita was originally described by Gould (1852) from Fiji as a bright crimson species, with small, scattered tubercles, resembling pustules; rhinophores, gill, and mantle margin sulphur-yellow.This description matches the current usage of the name in the binomen G. aurita (Wells & Bryce, 1993; Hervé, 2010; Nakano, 2018; Gosliner et al., 2018). While no material of G. aurita was examined for the present study, the species was reported from the Reef of the Sarcelle, New Caledonia, by Hervé (2010) and therefore listed herein.

Figures

FIGURE 1. A. Bayesian consensus phylogenetic tree of the concatenated dataset including PP above branches and MLB below branches. Branches fully supported (PP: 1, MLB: 100) marked with asterisks. New species described in this paper highlighted in red font and illustrated; other species reported from New Caledonia in this study highlighted in blue font. Clades are collapsed according to the results of the ASAP and bPTP species delimitation analyses. B. Histogram representing the distance plot from the ASAP analysis using the COI gene showing pairwise p-distances (Kimura 2 model) among candidate species. The dashed line represents the distance threshold provided by the lowest ASAP score for species delimitation.