Opisthobranch of the Week is Protaeolidia juliae

Protaeolidia juliae

Image courtesy of John and Lynette Flynn
Vila bay, Vanuatu

Protaeolidia juliae (Burn, 1966)

Look what just arrived from our friends in Vanuatu:

"Greetings from Vanuatu! We hope you are both doing well and enjoying life."

We recently took some photos of Protaeolidia juliae on hydroid at 1 m depth in Vila bay, Vanuatu. We don't see that this species has ever been featured in a BOW so we would like to submit our photos for consideration." Lynette and John had originally ID'ed this critter as Pleurolidia juliae Burn, 1966. This is a problematic species, but Carmona et al. (2015) concluded "in order to decide about the validity of the families Protaeolidiellidae and Pleurolidiidae further information about the phylogeny of the non-monophyletic Facelinidae is needed. See reference below.

Yet another nice find by the Flynns!

"We have one shot of a 35mm long individual with eggs and a close-up of this animal eating. Rather interestingly, the animal broke off a branch of the hydroid and grasped the piece with its oral tentacle while it consumed the hydroid tentacles and hydrothecas off the hydrocaulus. Although we know that hydroids are animals, not plants, we still joke that the nudis eat "the flowers" and leave "the stems." Our third shot is of a smaller 20mm individual whose eating behavior was to move along the hydrocaulus and eat the hydrothecas along its path. It appears to us the hydroid may be the same species that P. juliae has been found on in the Marshall Islands. Scott Johnson has tentatively identified this as Solanderia fusca."

Reference:

Leila Carmona o Marta Pola o Terrence M. Gosliner o Juan Lucas Cervera. 2015. Protaeolidiella atra Baba, 1955 versus Pleurolidia juliae Burn, 1966: One or two species? Helgolaander Meeresuntersuchungen 69(2)

Dave Behrens
New Braunfels, TX
Nov., 2024
Send Dave email at davidwbehrens@gmail.com

John and Lynette Flynn at the "clubhouse" of the Rongerik Yacht Club.
Rongerik is an uninhabited atoll in the Marshall Islands and to join the club you have to find some debris on the shore,
put your boat name on it, and hang it in the open air clubhouse.

We are John & Lynette Flynn, full time live-aboard cruisers and free-dive photographers who sailed our 46' boat "White Hawk" out of San Diego in 2014 and have been cruising the Pacific ever since.

Our current passion is underwater macro photography and we spend as much time in the water as we can searching for sea slugs. We are currently shooting with a Sony A7R4 and A7R5 in Nauticam housings with SMC-1 wet lenses on flip diopter holders on top of either a 90mm macro or a 28-70 lens. We are also using Sony RX100V's in Nauticam housings with CMC-1 wet lenses. We use Sea & Sea YS-D3 strobes and SOLA Video Pro lights.

Our motto is: "If you don't go - you don't know. If you don't look - you don't see."

Send John and Lynette mail at svwhitehawk@yahoo.com

From left to right, Terry Gosliner, Angel Valdes, Dave Behrens La Jolla, Calif.

Send Dave email at davidwbehrens@gmail.com