Orange-umikocho and kurofuchi-umikocho — a long-running ID mix-up in Japanese Siphopteron
I was asked to write this up, so here we go: why "orange-umikocho" is actually yellow, and "kurofuchi-umikocho" is actually orange.
In 1994 Professor Hiroshi Fukuda coined the Japanese vernacular name "orange-umikocho" (literally "orange sea-butterfly") for material collected at the Ogasawara Islands.
The question is whether the species shown in that figure really is S. brunneomarginatum. As I have flagged before in the pineapple-umiushi piece, this paper does not really make it possible to tell whether the identifications are right — or even whether "identification" in the formal sense is what's happening.
From here on is my own reading
The Ogasawara umikocho that essentially matches Fukuda's figure is, I believe, Siphopteron nigromarginatum — Japanese vernacular: "kurofuchi-umikocho" (literally "black-edged umikocho").
The vernacular "kurofuchi-umikocho" was assigned in the field guide Sea Slugs of Okinawa. The description paper of S. nigromarginatum (Gosliner, 1989) states:
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