Nudibranch Domain

Images and Information about Sea Slugs from around the world

This is a site for aficionados of nudibranchs and their sea slug relatives, who want more than pretty pictures. At the launch the site is populated with an image of each species sighted on the Sunshine Coast, southern Queensland, Australia by The Sunshine Coast Sea Slug Survey Team.

As the site develops, information, more images and references about each of the species will be added providing a helpful and valuable resource. The many hundreds of Indo-Pacific species, recorded by The Team when overseas, will also be regularly added significantly broadening the resource.

There are three ways to get your hit of Sea Slug knowledge.

Species Profile features information about specific sea slugs. Navigate, Identify and Learn about species via the lists. Notification of the latest expanded entry will appear below on the Home Page.
NudiNote features specific topics that can be sourced via its Archive. Notification of the latest entry will appear below on the Home Page.
Understanding Nudibranchs is a book on general sea slug biology and behaviour that will be posted in parts, as they are completed.

Home to The Sea Slug Survey of the Sunshine Coast

The Sea Slug Snippet

Goniodoridella sp. 03 Undescribed

Small, translucent with irregular opaque white patches and brown spots to dorsum, sides of body, rhinophores and extrabranchial processes. Extrabranchial processes elongate and bulbous tipped. Yellow pigment to oral veil, tips of rhinophore & extrabranchials plus tail.

Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Latest NudiNote

NudiNotes are interesting and informative short articles about sea slugs and their behaviour.

SLUGIVORES – SEA SLUGS THAT PREY ON SEA SLUGS

Slugivores - Sea Slugs That Prey On Sea Slugs The great majority of sea slug species are carnivorous, meaning they prey on animal life rather than plant life. It is often not appreciated that sponges, bryozoans and hydroids etc. although primitive life forms, and...

HITCHIN’ A RIDE ON THE SEA SLUG TRAIN

Hitchin' a Ride on the Sea Slug Train It is often said there is no such thing as a free meal, but what about a free ride to collect your meal? One sees sea slugs on many sessile invertebrates either feeding or traversing but only occasionally does one see...

THE ALGAE GRAZERS

The Algae Grazers (Header image above - Petalifera ramosa) It has long been established that the algae are the base upon which the marine food web is built and sustained. Algae are an important food source for numerous marine animals across many different phyla...

THE CORAL EATERS

Many people are surprised to learn that some nudibranch sea slugs are actually corallivorous, that is they feed upon corals. Those that keep corals in aquariums however know only too well the havoc certain nudibranchs can cause particular corals. Corals don’t look to...

GIVING THE FINGER – The siphon of gastropterids

The Gastropteridae are cephalaspideans or head-shield slugs. It would appear that their “main claim to fame”, bright and dramatic colouration of many aside, revolves around the ability and propensity of many to swim by flapping their parapodia. This behaviour has led...

SPECIFICITY IN DIVERSITY – The diet of sea slugs

Across the entire group, the sea slugs have an extremely diverse source of food types, but conversely, each species usually has an extremely specific diet restricted in many cases to one or only few, usually closely related, prey species. A list of the animal types...

Lookalikes to Look out for – No. 2. – Mexichromis pusilla & Verconia varians

Mexichromis pusilla - Verconia varians In No. 2 of this series Mexichromis pusilla (Bergh, 1874) and Verconia varians (Pease,1871) will be discussed. Both species were described back in the 19th century and have gone through a couple of name changes. The original...

FOUR AND MORE INTO ONE – Variation in Miamira moloch

Miamira moloch is a large to very large nudibranch of the Chromdorididae Family. It was first described as Ceratosoma moloch in 1988 by Rudman from two specimens, one collected from Heron Island, Central Queensland and the other from North Stradbroke Island, Southern...

REMARKABLE RHINOPHORES

When you don’t possess true eyes to recognise the shape of things, to see where you’re going, or what’s coming, then you must certainly have some other highly developed sense to survive. Living in a medium that has thousands of different compounds dissolved or...

STALKING WORMS – FEEDING BY Mariaglaja inornata

The Aglajidae are a carnivorous group of headshield sea slugs that actively hunt their prey. They are mostly fast moving in order to capture other sea slugs and polychaete worms. They are well-adapted for the task with clusters of sensory bristles located on the front...

The current NudiNote is displayed above. Click to read more or slide to earlier NudiNotes using the arrows which appear when hovering over the image. Alternatively all the NudiNotes may be accessed via the button on the navigation bar above.

Species Profile

All species sighted have been listed on the website with at least one image. There is an ongoing update process whereby information about each species including references and additional images will be added. As each species is enhanced it will be featured here as a temporary notification of that latest update.

Cratena sp. 07

Information about this species has been added to its page with references. Additional images have been added to the gallery.

News and Updates

A new page will be coming to the website soon. RECORD OF FINDS will be a chronological archive of the dive and intertidal surveys undertaken by The Team detailing the species finds and circumstances.