Melibe viridis

Melibe viridis is a species of sea slug, a nudibranch, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Tethydidae.

Distribution

This species occurs in the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Andaman Sea off Phuket, off Mozambique and off Indonesia. Its habitat is sandy and muddy areas between 3 m and 15 m deep.

Description

The body reaches a length of 140 mm. Like some other nudibranch species, M. viridis has an oral veil that it uses to trap prey. This species has a particular morphology that easily distinguishes it from other nudibranchs. The body is elongated, beige to brown in color. The Melibe has a number of pairs of ceratas along the body, each of which acts as a gill. The ceratas are often darker in color than the body, sometimes with an orange apical part, their size decreasing towards the anterior part.