Onchidorididae

Acanthodoris lutea laying eggs

The Onchidorididae are a family of slugs in the subordination of the nudibranchs. These are usually medium sized, exclusively marine shell-less snails, which eat mostly sponges and bryozoans.

Features

The Onchidorididae have a flat body with an oval outline. The back is soft and with many small tubercles or warts, tubercles, covered. The two seated at the head sensor, the rhinophores are laminated. Often a semi-circular mouth sail is present, such as in the genus Onchidoris. The around the anus at the back arranged wide wreath of small gills can not be retracted, but this is partly with individual gill possible.

The snails have a narrow radula with hook-shaped first and sometimes second molars. Jaw missing. At the pharynx located posterior to a goiter, by means of which food can be absorbed.

The Onchidorididae eat mostly sponges and bryozoans, the meat of which is rasped with the radula.

Like other slugs are hermaphrodites Onchidorididae and copulate each other. They lay their eggs in mostly white Eischnüren, which hatch numerous veliger larvae, which feed on plankton and metamorphose after an extended pelagic phase to small slugs.

The Onchidorididae include, among others Weichwarzige Sternschnecke ( Acanthodoris pilosa ), the Red Star snail ( Adalaria proxima ), the brown-speckled Sternschnecke ( Onchidoris bilamellata ) and the Rough Sternschnecke ( Onchidoris muricata ).

System

After Bouchet and Rocroi ( 2005), the family Onchidorididae one of three families in the superfamily Onchidoridoidea. This family includes seven genera:

  • Acanthodoris Gray, 1850
  • Adalaria Bergh, 1879
  • Calycidoris Abraham, 1876
  • Diaphorodoris Iredale and O'Donoghue, 1923
  • Loy Martynov, 1994 ( only type meyeni Loy Martynov, 1994)
  • Onchidoris de Blainville, 1816
  • Onchimira Martynov, Korshunova, N. & K. Sanamyan Sanamyan, 2009 ( only type Onchimira cavifera Martynov, Korshunova, N. & K. Sanamyan Sanamyan, 2009)

Lamellidoris Adler & Hancock, 1855 is synonymized with Onchidoris Blainville, 1816.

These genera are now placed to the family Akiodorididae:

  • Akiodoris Bergh, 1879
  • Doridunculus G. O. Sars, 1878
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