Phyllidiopsis is a genus of sea slugs, dorid nudibranchs, shell-less marine gastropod molluscs and is the largest genus within the family Phyllidiidae.
The species in this genus differ from the other genera in this family by possessing an elongate foregut and fused oral tentacles.
Distribution
These nudibranchs can be found in the tropical Indo-Pacific region, the eastern Pacific region, in the Red Sea, in the Caribbean Sea and a few in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. About half of the described species can be found in deep waters. Among these deep-water sea slugs, there is a group of white species, lacking all contrasting colors.
Species
There are presently about 30 species in the genus Phyllidiopsis including :
Phyllidiopsis annae Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis anomala Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis bayi (Bouchet, 1983)
Phyllidiopsis berghi Vayssière, 1902
Phyllidiopsis blanca Gosliner & Behrens, 1988
Phyllidiopsis boucheti Valdes & Ortea, 1996
Phyllidiopsis brunckhorsti Valdés, 2001
Phyllidiopsis burni Brunckhorst, 1993
Phyllidiopsis cardinalis Bergh, 1876 : type species of the genus Phyllidiopsis
Phyllidiopsis papilligera Bergh, 1890: synonym of Ceratophyllidia papilligera (Bergh, 1890)
Phyllidiopsis striata Bergh, 1888: synonym of Phyllidiella striata (Bergh, 1890)
A maximum-parsimony analysis of the nucleotide sequence of the 16S mtDNA gene, performed in 2003, has shown that the genus Phyllidiopsis is paraphyletic.
