Baeolidia harrietae (Rudman, 1982)

(Fig. 8 A)

Aeolidiopsis harrietae Rudman, 1982: 157, Figs. 3 C, 5D–F, 7–9. Baeolidia harrietae (Rudman, 1982): Gosliner 1985, 260, Table 1.

Type locality. Lizard Island, Australia.

Type material. The holotype is deposited in the Australian Museum, Sydney (C124689).

Geographical distribution. Originally reported for the Great Barrier Reef of Australia (Rudman 1982), it is also known from Papua New Guinea (Gosliner et al. 2008), the Philippines (Gosliner et al. 2008) and the Ryukyu Is., Japan (Ono 2004).

External and internal morphology. Figured and described in detail by Rudman (1982). No specimens available for the present study.

Remarks. When Rudman (1982) first described Aeolidiopsis harrietae, he pointed out the difficulties of discerning the systematic position of this species within Aeolidiidae. The author finally attributed this species to Aeolidiopsis based on the diet similarities with Aeolidiopsis ransoni. Gosliner (1985) considered that Aeolidiopsis harrietae shares some morphological aspects with Baeolidia palythoae, such as the papillate rhinophores, and therefore transferred A. harrietae to Baeolidia. The molecular phylogeny conducted by Carmona et al. (2013) rejected the validity of the genus Aeolidiopsis, since Aeolidiopsis ransoni clustered within the Baeolidia clade. Thus, we agree with Gosliner’s (1985) statements and confirm its placement within Baeolidia.

Baeolidia ransoni, B. harrietae and B. palythoae are very similar from a morphological point of view. However, while B. harrietae has papillate rhinophores, B. ransoni has smooth ones. B. palythoae has two pairs of oral glands, but Rudman (1982) could not find any traces of oral glands in B. harrietae.