Gymnodoris inornata

Photo courtesy of Ali Hermosillo
South Komodos Islands, Indonesia

Oct. 2007

Gymnodoris inornata, Berg, 1880

The tales of our past trip to Indonesia (Bali and Komodo Park areas) could (but will not) go on for a very long time since we were lucky to find and photograph a few hundred gorgeous species of sea slugs and countless other amazing sea creatures.

Most of our encounters were usual suspects, pretty species known in wide areas and photographed by almost every photographer (amateur or otherwise) who has the opportunity to visit the Indopacific.

Other finds were uncommon species very seldom seen by a lucky few (previous BOW Ceratosoma moloch ). And only once we ran into something that we saw and thought: "what in the world is that????" That is exactly what happened to us with this week´s species. At a second glance and comparing to other photos, we think it is very likely Gymnodoris inornata , the deep red solid color, impressive size (about 5 in) and behavior threw us off track initially (maybe). We found these Gymnodoris inornata at night. The habitat was sandy bottom with good coverage of soft corals. Nudibranchs of the genus Gymnodoris are known predators of other nudibranchs, having developed taste buds for Marionia and Tritonia , which live on soft corals and feed at night, we figure our Gymnodoris inortata were out hunting for them but were not able to witness the actual feeding. The feedng behavior of the species has been described before on Bill Rudman's Sea Slug Forum .

Send Ali email at gueri25@hotmail.com

Leeanne Vanderkoi and Ali
South Komodos Islands, Indonesia
Oct. 2007

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