Elysia papillosa at the Pierce Lab, University of South Florida 12/28/17

Description: Slender-bodied, small (~2 cm), cryptic Elysia ,with simple parapodia and tubular rhinophores with transverese orange-brown bands.  Body and rhinophores heavily peppered with small papillae.

Synonyms: Elysia patina (Gawacki et al., 2016)

Distribution: Florida Keys and Caribbean

Food plants:  Halimeda (Christa et al., 2014), Penicillus (Curtis et al., 2015)

Development: Lecithotrophic (Krug, 2009)

Kleptoplasty: Short-term (Curtis et al., 2015)

Scientific Literature

Barber K, Middlebrooks M, Bell S, Pierce S. (2021) The Specialist Marine Herbivore Elysia papillosa Grows Faster on a Less Utilized Algal Diet. Biol Bull. 241:158-167. [F] [K] [NH] [Pa]

de Sisto, M., Crescini, R., Villalba, W., Rios, B., Gomez, V., Mata, Y. (2016) Sacoglossans Opisthobranchia: Sacoglossa) from Nueva Esparta state and Los Frailes, Venezuela.  Revista Mexicana De Biodiversidad 87: 42-48 [Ca] [Pa] [Se] [Su]

Gowacki, W.A., Bell, S.S., Pierce, S.K. (2016) Correcting taxonomic confusion for the kleptoplastic sea slug Elysia papillosa Verrill (1901) American Malacological Bulletin 2: 85-91 [Pa] [Pt]

Krug, P.J., Vendetti, J.E., Valdes, A. (2016) Molecular and morphological systematics of Elysia Risso, 1818 (Heterobranchia: Sacoglossa) from the Caribbean region. Zootaxa 4148: 1-137 Thorough analysis of Elysia, rendering many names used on this site obsolete.

Curtis, N.E., Middlebrooks, M.L., Schwartz, J.A., Pierce, S.K. (2015) Kleptoplastic sacoglossan species have very different capacities for plastid maintenance despite utilizing the same algal donors. Symbiosis, 65 (1), pp. 23-31 [F] [K] [Cl] [Pp]

Christa, G., Händeler, K., Kück, P., Vleugels, M., Franken, J., Karmeinski, D., Wägele, H. (2014) Phylogenetic evidence for multiple independent origins of functional kleptoplasty in Sacoglossa (Heterobranchia, Gastropoda). Organisms Diversity and Evolution, 15 (1), pp. 23-36 [K] [F] [Cl] [Pp] [Pt] [Zu]

Krug, P.J. (2009) Not My “Type”: Larval dispersal dimorphisms and bet-hedging in opisthobranch life histories. Biological Bulletin, 216 (3), pp. 355-372. PDF [NH] [Co] [Cr] [Pp] [Pr] [Su] [Tu] [Zu]

Williams, S.I., Walker D.I. (1999) Mesoherbivore-macroalgal interactions: feeding ecology of sacoglossan sea slugs (Mollusca, Opisthobranchia) and their effects on food algae.  Oceanogr Mar Biol Annu Rev 37: 87-128 [At] [Au] [Ca] [Ev] [Ex] [Fi] [Fu] [He] [Ma] [Or] [Pa] [Pu] [Se] [Su] [Ti] [Tu] [Vi] Excellent review of food sources

Verrill, A. E. 1901. Additions to the fauna of the Bermudas from the Yale expedition of 1901, with notes on other species. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 11:15–62 [NH] [Pa]