Chromodoris tinctoria (?)

Photo courtesy of Webmaster
Batangas, Philippines
May 2006

Chromodoris tinctoria in one sea slug that enjoys an extreme of color variation and physical texture on the notum based my many encounters with the slug in the Indo-Pacific area. At some point in time, one can't help but think in terms of different species. Bill Rudman of the Sea Slug Forum indicates that comparative internal anatomy has not supported this idea where it was possible to collect specimens. One of these days, I am going to put together a slide show just on the many variations I have seen. The presence of the yellow triangular "patch" on this one immediately caught my attention on a recent trip to Batangas, Philippines. What's going on here? A genetic malfunction? Parasitic growth of some kind? Have any ideas on this? Drop me a line!

For those those that have windows media player installed, please enjoy a short video of this week's subject!

The next regularly scheduled BOW will be August 7th as I will be up in Washington enjoying the underwater fauna at Whidbey Island courtesy of Jan Kocian (Diving Cartoonist).

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