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Opisthobranch of the Week Data
Taxonomy:
I've personally never seen Hypselodoris sp. 1 in the waters of Okinawa's main island and Atsushi Ono reports (pers. comm.) seeing only the above single uncollected individual in the Kerama Islands, located 30 ~ 40 kilometers west of the Okinawa capitol, Naha, and he of course considers the animal to be very rare there. This featured animal was photographed and collected by Atsushi during June of 2011 in twelve meters of water. Atsushi's photograph is used here with his kind permission. Atsushi mentions the animal was photographed amid rocks of a coral reef environment.
Hypselodoris sp. 1 is perhaps the same animal shown in Gosliner, Behrens, & Valdés, 2008 (p. 270 as Hypselodoris sp. 11, a 12mm specimen). In that publication the authors report its distribution is known from the Western Indian Ocean of Aldabra to the western Pacific of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan.
Previously thirteen described species of Hypselodoris found in Okinawan waters have been featured on these pages. The thirteen species identified to date (January, 2012) are:
