A little over a month down the road, the little slugs that rode in with the last batch of macroalgae are still pumping out eggs.  At some point, I will really need to figure out the actual species, rather than referring to them (probably erroneously) as E. papillosa. Always more to do than time to do it.

Here is the young lady laying eggs this morning.   No scale, but she is probably about 4 cm at this point.  Note that the egg mass is different from the tidy coil seen in a previous clutch, seen here.

Small Elysia species laying eggs. 9/30/15.

If past experience holds true, the eggs will hatch within about 5 days, which is a lot faster than the larger E. clarki. In order to compare the developmental sequences of the two species, I have started taking photos of the little guys’ development.

Below is a shot at about  20X, showing a couple of strands.

Eggs of small Elysia species (papillosa?), about 7 hours old. Debris from surrounding algae. 9/30/15

At higher magnification.

Eggs of small Elysia species. Photographed at 40X, black bars in background spaced at 1 mm. 9/30/15.

Given their rapid development, it will be interesting to see what they look like tomorrow.  For a sense of scale, try to compare the eggs in the micrographs to the barely resolvable dots in the egg cluster as the eggs are being deposited.