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Coral Beach - Moses Rock · 2026 · Photo: Boaz Liebes
Pustulose wart slug
Israel · Red Sea - Gulf of Aqaba
One of the most common nudibranchs on tropical Indo-West Pacific reefs, a phyllidiid dorid with a tough, warty mantle and no dorsal gill plume (the gills lie under the mantle edge). Like other phyllidiids it produces distasteful chemicals and is readily seen crawling in the open by day.
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Black mantle covered with rounded tubercles that are pink, green or whitish, gathered into clusters; the three median clusters are fused in juveniles and become separate in large animals. The mantle edge is pale pink and the oral tentacles are black-tipped. Rhinophores are black.
Phyllidiella annulata has pink tubercles arranged in rings around black centres; P. zeylanica and P. granulata differ in the arrangement of the tubercles and in mantle-edge colour.
Coral reefs and rubble, in the open by day; roughly 1–30 m.
Like other phyllidiids, feeds on sponges.
