Oh how I love it when Bang Guy does this. If you are a Bang Guy fan and believe like me that we should all have "Bang Guy Fan" bumper stickers. Then you must relieze that when he does this I just have to reach deeper and start leaning more. That man just will not let me relax. I just can't stand it when he pops up and knows more than anyone else. Even his "yep" posts show more detail than mine do
Just ribbing ya Guy.
Well I haven't kept up on my sea slugs and nudibranches, but I believe Guy is correct, some sea slugs are not nudibranches....Its the fire worm / bristle worm whats in a name game.
Even when I was looking up nudibranchs and sea slugs, I found that it used to be this taxonomy and that taxonomy which tells me that debates had not been settled. Believe it or not in this world we live in that we are still discovering things and classifiying them.
So whats the big difference: Now's my chance to cut and paste and be a big blow hard.
And now without further adue, more than you ever wanted to know about the difference between Nudibranch and sea slugs.
Description: Nudibranch
These sea slugs are jelly-bodied snails. The adult form is without a shell or operculum (= bony plate covering the opening of the shell, when the body is withdrawn).
The word ‘nudibranch’ comes from New Latin "Nudibranchia". The Latin word "nudus", means
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, and the Greek word "branchia" means gills. Thus, nudibranch translates to "
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gills", which is appropriate since the dorids breathe through a branchial plume, bushy extremities on their back, rather than using gills. On the back of the aeolids are three brightly colored sets of tentacles called cerata.
Nudibranchs have cephalic (i.e. situated on the head) tentacles, which are sensitive to touch, taste, and smell (club-shaped rhinophores detect the odors).
They are hermaphroditic, but cannot fertilize themselves. They are carnivorous. Some feed on sponges, others on hydroids, others on bryozoans, and some are cannibals, eating members of their own species. There is also a group that feeds on tunicates and barnacles.
Body forms can vary wildly. They lack a mantle cavity. Their size varies from 4 mm to 60 cm.
They occur worldwide at all depths, but they reach their greatest size and variation in warm, shallow waters.
Among them, you can find the most colorful creatures on earth. Because sea slugs, in the course of evolution, have lost their shell, they had to evolve another means of defense: camouflage, through color patterns that make them invisible (= cryptic behavior) or warn off predators as being distasteful or poisonous (= aposematic behavior). Champions in their colorful display are the Chromodorids.
Taxonomy
The taxonomy of the Nudibranchia is still evolving. Many taxonomists used to treat the Nudibranchia as an order, based on the authoritative work of J. Thiele (1931), who built on the concept of Milne-Edwards (1848). But new insights through morphological data and gene-sequence research, cause some confidence in the congruence of the data sets of the new and the old.
·Subclass Orthogastropoda Ponder & Lindberg, 1997 (earlier Prosobranchia, Opisthobranchia)
Superorder Heterobranchia J.E. Gray, 1840
Order Opisthobranchia Milne-Edwards, 1848
Suborder Nudibranchia Blainville, 1814 (nudibranchs)
Infraorder Anthobranchia Férussac, 1819 (dorids)
Superfamily Doridoidea Rafinesque, 1815
Superfamily Doridoxoidea Bergh, 1900
Superfamily Onchidoridoidea Alder & Hancock, 1845
Superfamily Polyceroidea Alder & Hancock, 1845
Infraorder Cladobranchia Willan & Morton, 1984 (aeolids)
Superfamily Aeolidioidea J. E. Gray, 1827
Superfamily Arminoidea, Rafinesque, 1814
Superfamily Dendronotoidea Allman, 1845
Superfamily Metarminoidea Odhner in Franc, 1968
The dorids (infraorder Anthobranchia) have following characteristics : the branchial plume forms a cluster on the posterior part of the back, around the anus. Fringes on the mantle do not contain any intestines.
The aeolids (infraorder Cladobranchia) have the following characteristics : Instead of the branchial plume, they have cerata. They lack a mantle. Only species of the Cladobranchia are reported to house zooxanthellae.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Mollusca
Class:Gastropoda
Subclass:Orthogastropoda
Superorder:Heterobranchia
Order:Opisthobranchia
Suborder:Nudibranchia
*see next post
he has me learning again.
