Leslie
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Posts posted by Leslie
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My first response was the same as Jim's but it's a flatworm. Many of them have that type of tentacles. The white streak in the middle of the body is the stomach and the 2 white spots at the end of the stomach are internal reproductive organs. The movement is very characteristic for a flattie.
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It's certainly possible. Boxer crabs sweep their anemones over surfaces to pick up food particles which they then take from the anemones. Arm waving could make them look more like a collection of hydroid branches for better camouflage. Last possibility is that he really was trying to get your attention & get into one of your books.
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Hi there - Those are the 2 feeding palps of some kind of polychaete. It might be in family Spionidae, Chaetopteridae, or several other families. The palps pick up particles of food & carry them back to the mouth while the body is safe inside the burrow.
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I wish!
You were closer with "anemone" on your flickr page - it's a solitary hydroid. -
Note: Not actually sure how a fire worm, that does not actually have eyes can "see" color, but they do.But they do have eyes. It's just that the eyes aren't easily seen in the large amphinomid species with prominent caruncles overlying the head.
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Both are H. denise I think. According to Richard Smith who is doing his PhD on pygmy seahorses H. denise is a generalist that lives on at least 8 genera. It comes in a variety of colors - matching the host - & the degrees of papillation varies. Check out his seahorse species pages for lots of photos & facts. He includes photos of the "Raja Ampat" color morph under H. denise.
http://oceanrealmimages.com/category/galle...pygmy-seahorses
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Hi Nick - they look like brittle stars to me.
I'd love to know if the pelagic larva settled on the jelly & stayed there or if the jelly got too close to the bottom & they climbed on. I suspect it's the first option.
Cheers, Leslie
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Maybe. As with most pilumnids they're pretty well camouflaged by the hairs & all the silt/debris attached to them so they'd be hard to see unless they're moving.
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Nope, just a shaggy crab in the family Pilumnidae. Do an image search on Heteropilumnus ciliatus or Heteropilumnus hirsutior and see which one you think it is.
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Yup. Like the harlequins these are specialized echinoderm predators that - as far as we know - only go after brittle stars.
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That's a banded clinging crab, Mithrax cinctimanus. They're commensals on several types of anenomes. The red & white tips of the claws are characteristic for the species. The rest of the body is often very heavily covered by filamentous algae which hides the banding on the legs & carapace. Here's a pic of one with a clean carapace showing the colors - http://reefguide.org/pixhtml/bandedclingingcrab3.html
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The color is variable. You've got a big female there Christian. For some very detailed photos of one go to http://www.chucksaddiction.com/car013.html
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It is a relative, Phyllognathia simplex. Cor & others have posted about it before. Eric even took video of one munching on a brittle star. Although reports of it are rare the animal is probably common. It's just so small & well camouflaged against the sand that very few people notice it. It was described from Sagami Bay, Japan & extends at least to Australia, PNG, & Indonesia. The second link will take you to the original scientific description & the third to a later paper that includes the color pattern.
http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showt...rt=#entry240481
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Hi Alex -- It's an interesting photo from an aesthetic point of view but not so much for identification. The short, feathery, upwards-tilting antennae remind me of some species in family Hippolytidae but I wouldn't label it as anything more than "Shrimp" based on that photo. sorry!
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It's a polychaete epitoke. Worms often spawn at the same time as corals or anemones. One theory is that if everyone spawns simultaneously there will be so much in the water that individuals have a better chance of escaping predators; another is that the animals are all responding to the same stimulus. Could be both are right.
I suspect the epitoke belongs to the family Eunicidae. It's not feeding on the anemone's spawn. The worm's movement is pretty erratic and it just blundered into the anemone. That puff of white is probably the worm exploding & releasing it's own gametes.
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Thanks for posting the id Nick
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Leslie was out of commission for a while & didn't do much for anyone, even me. :-(
The worms belong to the genus Haplosyllis. Once upon a time they were all called Haplosyllis spongicola (the species name means "living on sponges"). Now they've been divided into a number of different genera. Some associate with only 1 species of sponge while others are less particular about who they live with. Cindy & her partners got some excellent photos of the worm & white-foot shrimp. I don't remember which species they photographed - have to go back to my notes for that.
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If only the people working with these things would include color photos as well as line drawings we'd be able to ID more of what gets photographed. Until then..... I don't even know enough to be confident about genus, sorry.
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Just comparing the antennae shows you have 2 different species - probably genera - in your picture Alex, and Gordon has something entirely different. Gordon's is probably a true commensal. Members have posted pics of it before but there's nothing in the literature that I could find on it.
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Family Syllidae, subfamily Autolytinae. I'll check my references when I get to work to see if I can find a matching species. It's a female up in the water column to release her eggs.
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Striped goose barnacle, Conchoderma virgatum. It's typically pelagic & will attach to many different things including animals like the sea snake in this photo by lantanatx http://www.flickr.com/photos/lantanatx/243...in/photostream/
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Not sure at all. My first (& only) guess is that it's the detached tentacle from some kind of jelly.
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That's one possibility. There are also some similar Marionia species. Do you have a photo of it from above that shows the back? That would be helpful in deciding where to put it.
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Okay, brain kicked in. Family Galeommatidae, genus Scintilla or Galeomma or something like that. Check these out -
http://www.poppe-images.com/?t=17&photoid=955799
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/reefs/guamimg/bivalvia/index.html
http://www.wildsingapore.com/wildfacts/mol...e/scintilla.htm
What's that Shrimp?
in Critter Identification
Posted
Nice one! Interesting movement - I can't tell if it's grooming itself or feeding off the algae.