Trapania stegodon Smirnoff, Donohoo & Gosliner, 2022

MORPHOLOGY

It has an opaque grey body covered dorsally with speckled red-brown colour characterized by small and large blotches of missing pigmentation. Notable blotches reside laterally below the rhinophores, below the gill plume and at the posterior portion of the foot. Extra-rhinophoral and extra-brachial appendages have red brown at base but are light yellow to the tip. Rhinophores, eight to ten lamellae and a pointed tip, are uniformly wide along their length and the same colour as the red-brown body, except for the grey tip. Oral tentacles are coloured at their base and opaque grey at the tip. Similarly, the anterior margins of the foot, which extend laterally as elongate appendages, are coloured at their base and opaque grey at their tip. The gill plume is composed of three large and highly branched elements that are the same colour as the body

DISTRIBUTION

Known from the Philippines (present study) and Indonesia

ETYMOLOGY

This species is named for Stegodon luzonensis von Koenigwald 1956, a Pleistocene megafauna with ivory tusks that roamed Luzon, Mindanao and other Philippine islands. It refers to the white-tipped extra-rhinophoral and extrabranchial appendages. It is a noun in apposition.

---

References

• Trapania sp. 11, Terrence Gosliner, Ángel Valdés and David Behrens. (2018). Nudibranch and Sea Slug Identification Indo-Pacific 2nd Edition. New World Pubns Inc.
• Trapania stegodon sp. nov., Smirnoff D.S., Donohoo S.A. & Gosliner T.M. (2022). Extra-branchial processes manifest extra diversity: systematics of the genus Trapania (Nudibranchia: Goniodorididae) and nine new species descriptions. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 196(1): 270-313. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac009
• Paz-Sedano S., Moles J., Smirnoff D., Gosliner T.M. & Pola M. (2024). A combined phylogenetic strategy illuminates the evolution of Goniodorididae nudibranchs (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Heterobranchia). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 192: 107990. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2023.107990