Selection: Trinchesia sibogae

Trinchesia sibogae (Bergh, 1905) [Hervia]

Click the thumbnail photos to enhance!

Trinchesia sibogae has a pale lilac purple body, the oral tentacles and the slender smooth rhinophores are pale lilac purple at the base, the upper half reddish purple. The cerata are pale lilac purple with a deep reddish purple to deep purple subapical band and a bright golden yellow tip. It feeds on an orange-yellow hydroid of the genus Sertularella.
Pretty similar is Flabellina sp.01, which differs by the papillate rhinophores.
I have posted more pictures of Trinchesia sibogae as usual to show some colour variants and a specimen with its egg mass.
It was originally posted at these websites as Cuthona sibogae (Bergh, 1905) [Hervia]. I follow:
Miller, M.C. 2005. An appraisal of the identity of the New Zealand species of the aeolid nudibranch family Tergipedidae (Gastropoda: Opisthobranchia). Journal of Natural History 38: 1183-1192.
let me quote from the last sentence of the abstract:
"As a result the genus Cuthona Alder & Hancock, 1855 is restricted to one species, C. nana (Alder & Hancock, 1842), and the genus Trinchesia von Ihering, 1879 is re-introduced for the rest of the species previously included in Cuthona."
More informations on Trinchesia sibogae as Cuthona sibogae are at Bill Rudman's Sea-Slug Forum!