Dendronotus lacteus explained

Dendronotus lacteus is a species of sea slug, a dendronotid nudibranch, a shell-less marine gastropod mollusc in the family Dendronotidae.^[1]

Distribution

This species was described from a specimen collected at the entrance to Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland, Irish Sea. It was long considered to be a synonym of Dendronotus frondosus but separated by Thollesson in 2000 using the technique of allozyme electrophoresis.^[2] This was confirmed with DNA sequencing in 2015.^[3] The species is known from the Irish Sea north to Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, and the Barents Sea.

Notes and References

1. Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. (2015). Dendronotus lacteus. In: MolluscaBase (2015). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species on 2016-02-06.
2. Thollesson, Mikael. 1998. Discrimination of two Dendronotus species by allozyme electrophoresis and the reinstatement of Dendronotus lacteus (Thompson, 1840) (Nudibranchia, Dendronotoidea). Zoologica Scripta 27(3):189-195.
3. Ekimova, I.; Korshunova, T.; Schepetov, D.; Neretina, T.; Sanamyan, N.; Martynov, A. (2015). Integrative systematics of northern and Arctic nudibranchs of the genus Dendronotus (Mollusca, Gastropoda), with descriptions of three new species. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 173(4): 841-886.