Crowned doto | |
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Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Mollusca |
Class: | Gastropoda |
(unranked): | clade Heterobranchia clade Euthyneura |
Superfamily: | Tritonioidea |
Family: | Dotidae |
Genus: | Doto |
Species: | D. coronata |
Binomial name | |
Doto coronata (Gmelin, 1791) |
The crowned doto, Doto coronata, is a species of small sea slug or nudibranch, a dendronotid nudibranch, a shell-less marine gastropod mollusc in the family Dotidae. This species is found off South Africa, in the north Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea.
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This species is found in the north Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Around the South African coast it is found from the Atlantic coast to Knysna. It is known from the intertidal to 25 m.[1]
The crowned doto is a small (up to 15 mm) pale-bodied nudibranch, with darkly mottled grape-bunch-like clusters of cerata extending in pairs down the body. The rhinophores extend from cup-like sheaths.[2] May be confused with the feathered doto, Doto pinnatifida, but the cerata of this species are shorter and plumper than those of the feathered doto.
The crowned doto feeds on hydroids. Its egg mass is a tightly coiled white spiral of several turns, usually laid on hydroids.