Cadlinella ornatissima

• Main Authors: Yonow, Nathalie, Anderson, R. Charles, Buttress, Susan G.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Mollusca; Gastropoda; Nudibranchia; Cadlinellidae; Cadlinella; Cadlinella ornatissima; Indian; Coleman; Inner Reef; Nelson Island
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/5459460; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5459460

Cadlinella ornatissima (Risbec, 1928) (®gure 11c) Cadlina ornatissima Risbec, 1928: 163: ®gure 47, pl. 8, ®gure 4. Cadlinella ornatissima: Baba, 1949: 147, pl. 22, ®gure 80; Risbec, 1953: 90, ®gures 45, 48, 49; Rudman, 1984: 246, ®gures 1H, 8, 95±97. Material. Chag96/9: 14 mm; in cave on inner reef of Nelson Island, Great Chagos Bank; 3 March 1996; at 20 m depth. Description. A brightly coloured species with a deep yellow mantle covered with many pink-tipped, near-spherical tubercles; smaller and more numerous white ones were concentrated around the mantle margin. Rhinophores white and very long. Gills white. Geographic distribution. Indo-West Paci®c: recorded only from Tanzania (Rudman, 1984) in the Indian Ocean and otherwise from New Caledonia (Risbec, 1928, 1953), Japan (Baba, 1949) and the Great Barrier Reef (Rudman, 1984). Remarks. This species is rarely recorded in the scienti®c literature. It is easily recognized by its combination of bright orange mantle, pink-tipped rounded tubercles and extremely long white rhinophores. Until recently there has been only one named species of Cadlinella, but two species have recently been described from New Caledonia (Rudman, 1995) and Japan (Baba, 1996). A further two undescribed species have been photographed in the Red Sea (Debelius, 1996 as C. ornatissima) and Norfolk Island (South Paci®c: Coleman, 1989: 44 as C. ornatissima). These diOEer signi®cantly in external morphology and colour pattern from C. ornatissima, which is very constant, and from C. hirsuta Rudman, 1995 and C. subornatissima Baba, 1996. Cadlinella hirsuta is yellow with very long, tapering, white papillae; C. subornatissima is yellow centrally and white marginally with conical papillae. The Red Sea species is white with yellow reticulations and a narrow bright yellow margin, and the fusiform or digitiform tubercles are red to pink-red for their distal half. The South Paci®c species is bright yellow like C. ornatissima but has tapering tubercles rather than round-ended cylindrical or spherical ones, ...