nudibranchnerd.bsky.social
admirer & advocate of nudibabes & all their squishy relatives
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forbidden cocktail
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I love my nudibabes, but flatworms can be just as gorgeous!
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biblically accurate angel
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it's important to avoid touching nudibranchs since they are so delicate, I rarely touch nudibranchs & most unshelled invertebrates, usually only doing so if I find one dessicating out of water & have no other means assisting them, often keeping unpowdered gloves in my bag for such occasions
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here's one of the releases, I hold the bowl up to some kelp growing from the docks, wait for one of the nudibranchs to grab on, gently pull the bowl away, & with them luck!
🌊🐙🦑🌿🌎
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More Red under Rocks #marinelife in #Tidepools: Blood star (Henricia sp), crab claws, Speckled Triopha #nudibranch (Triopha maculata), brittle star
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it's important to remember that unless you're a scientist being paid to know these things, you shouldn't stress it! tidepooling & dockfouling are activities for finding joy in connecting with nature
plus, using tools like iNaturalist can take the pressure out of keeping track of taxonomic changes!
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I've met people who are new to tidepooling or dockfouling that have gotten frustrated when they try to learn these IDs because science is forever evolving!
In recent years, the Hopkin's rose nudibranch & Spanish shawl had scientific name revisions too, so I get why this can make it feel confusing
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much of this mistaken identity is due crassicornis & opalescens being merged together as a single species under H. crassicornis for about 90 years, but H. opalescens was reinstated as separate species in 2016
even on some university websites, they still incorrectly treat them as a single species
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in the wikipedia article for H. crassicornis, there are currently 2 pictures of opalescens being incorrectly used for the species & google searches for H. crassicornis will often populated images of opalescens
vice versa, searches for H. opalescens shows images of crassicornis too! *confusing*
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if you look at the og's post, you can clearly see the orange tipped cerata
we get a lot of H. opalescens in Monterey & in this observation I made last year, you can see the white tipped cerata as well as the lack of white stripe on this individual: www.inaturalist.org/observations...
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since there are exceptions where H. crassicornis individuals have been identified without orange cnidosacs, it isn't a perfect field mark for ID unless the cnidosacs are orange
it is a good additional field mark when present, but the white stripe is more reliable when distinguishing species
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another field mark that is only reliable when present is the color of the cnidosacs (where cnidocytes or stinging cells from cnidarians like hydrozoans are stored)
H. opalescens cnidosacs are white at the tip of the cerata
H. crassicornis cnidosacs are often (not always) orange at the tip
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probably the most reliable one is a white stripe on the cerata, which is prominently displayed by the og's post
H. crassicornis displays this vertical white stripe on their cerata, which is notably absent on H. opalescens
this is considered the best way to ID crassicornis from other Hermissenda sp
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while there can be morphological differences, the species do have natural variations that make this unreliable, but there are field marks to help distinguish them according to sea slug experts I've spoken with (wikipedia articles & google searches often get it wrong, so do not rely on them!)
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these 2 species of nudibranchs, a type of sea slug, are closely related, but H. opalescens tends to like it a little more south while H. crassicornis tends to prefer it a bit more north, though the both overlap in the Pacific Northwest & Northern California based on iNaturalist observations of them
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love that for them