The Tide Is Out

Two New Species of Nudibranch Described from California

Unlike my last new species post (April Fools, if you didn’t notice the date ;), these two new species are real, and they live right off the coast where many of us tide pool: Doto urak and Doto kwakwak. Neither of these species in the Doto family are very common and only have a few observations iNaturalist. But they have been observed in the intertidal and were known to be in the Doto family for several years. Some of the first observations of one of the species, Doto kwakwak, were made a couple of years ago by Chloe Van Loon of Chloe Van Loon’s Nature Blog.  See her post about these new species here.

After a long road, a paper titled “The song of the Doto (Nudibranchia: Dotidae): newly documented diversity from the coast of California” by Sneha Adayapalam, Lynn J. Bonomo, Carissa Shipman, and Terrence M. Gosliner has been released formally describing the species. One of the species, Doto kwakwak was given the name“kwakwak” after a Kumeyaay indigenous name that means yellow, for the yellow spots on its back.

This is a big deal for us nudibranch nerds since it takes a lot of time and money to describe species, and new morphs aren’t encountered very often on coasts that are as frequently tide-pooled as ours is. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see either of these species myself, but I intend to keep an eye out for them in the upcoming years.