Kuni's Nudibranch

Goniobranchus kuniei is a species of very colourful sea slug, a dorid nudibranch, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Chromodorididae.

Description

Yellowish mantle with broad purple margin often comprising darker purple inner and outer bands. There is a double border to the mantle of purple and blue. Numerous purple ringed dark spots often within diffuse reticulated brownish pattern on the mantle surface. Rhinophores and gills similar colour to mantle surface. Characteristically raises and lowers mantle skirt when crawling. The length of the body reaches 50 mm.

This is one of a group of similarly coloured species Hypselodoris tryoni, Chromodoris geminus and Goniobranchus leopardus. They all have large purple or purple-brown spots or marks, usually ringed with white, an often reticulate brownish background, and a purple border. Chromodoris geminus differs in having four colour bands around the mantle edge, an outermost white, then translucent greyish purple, then white, then yellow. The other three have a distinct purple line at the border, narrow in G. leopardus and H. tryoni, but broad in G. kuniei. The shape of the body of H. tryoni, high with a reduced mantle overlap, is typical of the genus Hypselodoris. The three species of Chromodoris have a wide mantle overlap. Of the three with the purple mantle edge, G. leopardus and G. kuniei can be distinguished from H. tryoni by the broad purple border, consisting of three slightly different coloured bands in G. kuniei, and by the leopard-like multiple spots, or marks, forming a hollow square, found in G. leopardus.

Distribution

This species was described from New Caledonia. It is known from the western Pacific Ocean and eastern Indian Ocean from Fiji, Marshall Islands, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Habitat

It likes waters that are between 21 and 26 degrees Celsius and is often found between 5 and 40 meters.