White Dendronotus

Dendronotus albus

Summary 4

Dendronotus albus is a species of sea slug, a dorid nudibranch, a shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusk in the family Dendronotidae.

Despite its name, these nudibranchs also have a less-common purple form.

Description 5

This species grows to a maximum length of 3.5 cm. It has an opaque white line on the tail and was distinguished from Dendronotus diversicolor by having more than four pairs of cerata, (typically 5 to 7), whilst D . diversicolor is a bigger animal but has no more than four or five pairs. These two names were synonymised by Stout et al., 2010. The body and cerata are translucent white with opaque white and orange-yellow tips to the cerata, although in some cases the orange-yellow is absent.

Diet 5

This species feeds preferentially on the hydroidThuiaria argentea in the family Sertulariidae. Dendronotus diversicolor is said to prefer Abietinaria greenei, Hydrallmania distans and Abietinaria amphora.

Distribution 5

This marine animal can be found off the west coast of North America from Alaska to Baja California.

Sources and Credits

  1. (c) Ken-ichi Ueda, some rights reserved (CC BY), uploaded by Ken-ichi Ueda, http://www.flickr.com/photos/18024068@N00/3186446999
  2. (c) Robin Agarwal (ANudibranchMom on iNaturalist), some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), https://www.flickr.com/photos/30314434@N06/19249629013/
  3. (c) Donna Pomeroy, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Donna Pomeroy
  4. Adapted by Robin Gwen Agarwal from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendronotus_albus
  5. (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendronotus_albus

More Info

iNat Map

Color orange, purple, white