Hermaea bifida (Montagu, 1816)

Salvador, Xavier, Fernández-Vilert, Robert & Moles, Juan, 2022, Sea slug night fever: 39 new records of elusive heterobranchs in the western Mediterranean (Mollusca: Gastropoda), Journal of Natural History 56 (5 - 8), pp. 265-310 : 295-297

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00222933.2022.2040630

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6772015

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/024087AB-D852-D116-9AAC-2255FD46FC74

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Hermaea bifida (Montagu, 1816)
status

 

Hermaea bifida (Montagu, 1816) View in CoL View at ENA

( Figure 6 View Figure 6 (a))

Material examined

Cala d’Aiguafreda, Begur ( Spain), 41°57 ʹ 49”N, 3°13 ʹ 41”E, 31 March 2017, 1 m depth, 9 spcs, adults, L = 7–12 mm; 25 December 2017, 1 m depth, 5 spcs, adults and juveniles; GoogleMaps Cala Maset caves, Sant Feliu de Guíxols ( Spain), 41°47 ʹ 10”N, 3°2 ʹ 44”E, 31 December 2017, 0.7 m depth, 2 spcs, juvenile and adult, L = 2–6 mm; 8 March 2018, 1.4 m depth, 2 spcs, adults and egg masses, L = 12 mm; GoogleMaps Cala Sa Tuna, 41°57 ʹ 38”N, 3°13 ʹ 52”E, 3 January 2018, 0.8 m depth, 4 spcs, adults, L = 5–7 mm; GoogleMaps Punta del Romaní, L’Escala ( Spain), 42°6 ʹ 54”N, 3° 10 ʹ 9”E, 6 January 2018, 0.7 m depth, 1 spc., juvenile, L = 2 mm; GoogleMaps Cala Trons, Lloret de Mar ( Spain), 41°41 ʹ 57”N, 2°51 ʹ 52”E, 20 January 2018, 1.7 m depth, 1 spc., adult, L = 12 mm. GoogleMaps

External morphology

Body elongate, narrow, background colour red and semi-transparent, with dispersed white dots concentrated around head, cerata and rhinophore apexes. Cerata globular, leaf-shaped, semi-transparent, with internal lines of red colour running towards apex and surrounded by four tubercles. Rhinophores beige, internally rolled, bifid with superior apex slightly longer than inferior one.

Ecology

Specimens were found on the red alga Bornetia secundiflora (J.Agardh) Thuret, 1855 , where they were mating and laying the eggs. The egg mass is whitish, cylindrical and ‘C’-shaped ( Figure 5 View Figure 5 (b), close-up); they were laid under the algae, around B. secundiflora but not on it.

Distribution

Central American coast and England (iNaturalist.org 2021); Portugal ( Cervera et al. 2004); Gibraltar ( García-Gómez 2002); Spain: Galicia ( Rolán 1983), Andalucía ( Cervera et al. 1988), Levantine coast ( Templado 1982; Templado et al. 1983, 1984; Marín and Ros 1988), Balearic Islands, Spain (GROC 2009–2021), Catalonia ( Ballesteros et al. 2016; this study); France ( Rudman 2021).

Remarks

In the Spanish Balearic Islands this species was reported on the invasive alga Lophocladia lallemandii (Montagne) F. Schmitz, 1893 ( GROC 2009–2021 ), off Catalonia we commonly found it on B. secundiflora ; juvenile specimens had a fluorescent orange colouration on their cerata, similar in colour to the latter alga.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Mollusca

Class

Gastropoda

Order

Runcinida

Family

Hermaeidae

Genus

Hermaea

GBIF Dataset (for parent article) Darwin Core Archive (for parent article) View in SIBiLS Plain XML RDF