Phyllidia sp. 9

Papu, Adelfia, Bogdanov, AleXander, Bara, Robert, Kehraus, Stefan, König, Gabriele M., YonoW, Nathalie & Wägele, Heike, 2022, Phyllidiidae (Nudibranchia, Heterobranchia, Gastropoda): an integrative taxonomic approach including chemical analyses, Organisms Diversity & Evolution (New York, N. Y.) 22 (3), pp. 585-629 : 599

Phyllidia sp. 9

The sister group to P. haegeli is a clade composed of only two specimens. One is from our collection (Phsp15Bu1, Fig. 5.4a), and one is from the study of Stoffels et al. (2016: fig. 7g, RMNH.Moll.336619), both with a colour pattern similar to the individual depicted by Gosliner et al. (2015: 282) under the name Phyllidia sp. 9 . The colour of our animal is bright white, with a distinctive black oval area in the middle of the mantle. This black area is disrupted by single white tubercles, usually capped with yellow, arranged in three rows. The yellow rhinophores arise from a broad white base encompassing the rhinophore and a rhino-tubercle in the black area. The animal depicted by Stoffels et al. (2016: fig. 7g) does not show any yellow traces, presumably because it is a photograph of the preserved specimen, and is completely white and black, but the pattern is identical. This species has a ventral anal opening, like both P. picta and P. haegeli . Sister-taxa relationship to P. haegeli is supported by a bootstrap value of 100. Intraspecific variability is less than 0.35%.