''Halgerda carlsoni'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

sea slug Sea slug is a common name for some marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that over evolutionary t ...

, a dorid nudibranch, shell-less

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gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

s in the family Discodorididae.Dayrat B. 2010
''A monographic revision of discodorid sea slugs (Gastropoda, Opisthobranchia, Nudibranchia, Doridina)''.
Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Series 4, vol. 61, suppl. I, 1-403, 382 figs.

Description

This animal is one of a group of mainly white species of ''Halgerda'' with orange markings. This species can be more than in length. Its body is massive, stocky and the mantle overhangs the narrow foot. The body is covered with tubercles of various sizes whose top is orange to red with a white rim at the base. The background body colour is translucent white with dense punctuation of very small red-orange dots. The mantle edge is trimmed with small tubercles tipped with orange to red dots. Rhinophores and gills are retractable, translucent and speckled with dark spots. Animals from East Africa differ in having lines or more continuous brown pigment on the rhinophores and gills instead of spots and are considered to be a distinct species by some authorities.Gosliner, T.M., Behrens, D.W. & Valdés, Á., 2018. ''Nudibranch and Sea Slug Identification - Indo-Pacific.'' New World Publications; 2nd Revised, Updated edition. 452 pp. , p. 111.

Distribution

This species was described from

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Harbour,

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. It has subsequently been reported from

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, the

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and

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.Rudman, W.B., 1999 (February 4
''Halgerda carlsoni'' Rudman, 1978.
n/nowiki> Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1421758 Discodorididae Gastropods described in 1978