Burn's Phyllidiopsis (Phyllidiopsis burni) — Habitat, Photos

Q: Where can you find Burn's Phyllidiopsis?

Burn's Phyllidiopsis can be found in: Australia West, Malaysia East, Taiwan, Marshall Islands, Malaysia West, Mabul Island, Vanuatu, Myanmar, Borneo Island, Australia, India, Japan South, India East, Thailand East, Thailand West, Indo-Pacific Central, Australia East, Indo-Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, Palau, Philippines, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Micronesia, Madagascar, Comoros, Thailand.

Phyllidiopsis is a genus of sea slugs, dorid nudibranchs, shell-less marine gastropod molluscs and is the largest genus within the family Phyllidiidae.

The species in this genus differ from the other genera in this family by possessing an elongate foregut.

Distribution

These nudibranchs can be found in the tropical Indo-Pacific region, the eastern Pacific region, in the Red Sea, in the Caribbean Sea and a few in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. About half of the described species can be found in deep waters. Among these deep-water sea slugs, there is a group of white species, lacking all contrasting colors.

Species

There are presently about 30 species in the genus Phyllidiopsis including :

Phyllidiopsis annae Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis anomala Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis bayi (Bouchet, 1983)
Phyllidiopsis berghi Vayssière, 1902
Phyllidiopsis blanca Gosliner & Behrens, 1988
Phyllidiopsis boucheti Valdes & Ortea, 1996
Phyllidiopsis brunckhorsti Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis burni Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis cardinalis Bergh, 1875 : type genus
Phyllidiopsis circularis Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis crucifera Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis dautzenbergi (Vayssière, 1911)
Phyllidiopsis fissurata Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis futunai Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis gemmata Pruvot-Fol, 1957
Phyllidiopsis holothuriana Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis krempfi Pruvot-Fol, 1957
Phyllidiopsis loricata (Bergh, 1873)
Phyllidiopsis lozoueti Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis macrotuberculata Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis monacha (Yonow, 1986)
Phyllidiopsis neocaledonica Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis phiphiensis Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis pipeki Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis quadrilineata (Bergh, 1905)
Phyllidiopsis richeri Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis shireenae Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis sinaiensis (Yonow, 1988)
Phyllidiopsis sphingis Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis striata Bergh, 1888
Phyllidiopsis vanuatuensis Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis xishaensis (Lin, 1983)

Phyllidiopsis carinata Eliot, 1910 : synonym of Phyllidia ocellata Cuvier, 1804
Phyllidiopsis papilligera Bergh, 1890: synonym of Ceratophyllidia papilligera (Bergh, 1890)

A maximum-parsimony analysis of the nucleotide sequence of the 16S mtDNA gene, performed in 2003, has shown that the genus Phyllidiopsis is paraphyletic.