Phyllidiopsis


Phyllidiopsis is a genus of sea slugs, dorid nudibranchs, shell-less marine gastropod molluscs and is the largest genus within the family Phyllidiidae.

Description

The species in this genus differ from the other genera in this family by possessing an elongate foregut and fused oral tentacles.

Distribution

These nudibranchs can be found in the tropical Indo-Pacific region, the eastern Pacific region, in the Red Sea, in the Caribbean Sea and a few in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. About half of the described species can be found in deep waters. Among these deep-water sea slugs, there is a group of white species, lacking all contrasting colors.

Species

There are presently about 30 species in the genus Phyllidiopsis including :
;Species brought into synonymy:
A maximum-parsimony analysis of the nucleotide sequence of the 16S mtDNA gene, performed in 2003, has shown that the genus Phyllidiopsis is paraphyletic.