Baeolidia australis

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Baeolidia australis is a sea slug, a type of aeolid nudibranch in the family Aeolidiidae. It was described from Long Reef near Sydney, Australia, and lives in waters from western Australia to New Zealand.

Distribution
It is found along the coasts of South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, and in northern New Zealand.

Identification
B. australis usually looks bluish. On each ceras (the finger-like parts on the body) it has a thin orange band above a broad blue band, a feature that helps distinguish it from its close relative Baeolidia moebii, which never has this orange-blue band. The body also shows a brown and white net-like pattern that is not found in B. moebii. B. moebii tends to be more yellow or brown.

Taxonomy
The species was previously named Spurilla australis. It belongs to the genus Baeolidia, with the binomial name Baeolidia australis (Rudman, 1982).