Doto greenamyeri – Limaciform!

The tiny donut or honey-dipper nudibranch is only up to 15mm in size and not easy to find. It was mentioned as Doto sp. 9 (Gosliner et al. 2008: 346) and was described only 6 years ago. While I got to know this sea slug as donut nudi, honey-dipper nudi seems to be another common name. The authors of the description wrote “shape of the cerata resembles that of a honey-dipper or a stack of pancakes“. That’s makes a very sweet breakfast menu. They described the body as limaciform, what literally mean it has the form of a slug (Limacoidei is the infraorder of terrestrial slugs). The sea slug has the form of a slug. Limaciform. Nailed it!

The nudi though likes it spicy. They feed on hydroids, which are somehow related to corals, anemones and jellyfish. Those hydroids have tiny stingers that leave a long lasting, uncomfortable pain. But hey, we never touch anything underwater, right? usually nudibranches use these stingers as their defense, so they somehow get it in their skin. How the heck, let me check. Jessica Goodheart described it here. The slug slime prevents the stingers from shooting, and some undeveloped cells (nematocysts) will be stored, grown, and used when need. That is amazing!

The appearance of D. greenamyeri is unique they say, so this time the id seems to be easy, but you never know, right? There are darker specimen in other regions which could be mistaken for a different species. The other Doto species (the seaslugforum lists more than 30) look very different but no lesser cool.