Dendronotus lacteus

Dendronotus lacteus is a species of sea slug, a dendronotid nudibranch, a shell-less marine gastropod mollusc in the family Dendronotidae.[2]

Dendronotus lacteus
The nudibranch Dendronotus lacteus, Eilean Dubh Beag, Firth of Lorne, Scotland.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Gastropoda
(unranked):	clade Heterobranchia clade Euthyneura clade Nudipleura clade Nudibranchia clade Dexiarchia clade Cladobranchia clade Dendronotida
Superfamily:	Tritonioidea
Family:	Dendronotidae
Genus:	Dendronotus
Species:	D. lacteus
Binomial name
Dendronotus lacteus (W. Thompson, 1840)[1]
Synonyms
Tritonia lactea W. Thompson, 1840 (basionym)

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.[3] This was confirmed with DNA sequencing in 2015.[4] The species is known from the Irish Sea north to Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, and the Barents Sea.[4]

References

1. Thompson, William. (1840). Contributions towards a knowledge of the Mollusca Nudibranchia and Mollusca Tunicata of Ireland, with descriptions of some apparently new species of Invertebrata. Annals & Magazine of Natural History 5(29):84-102, pl. 2.
2. Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. (2015). Dendronotus lacteus. In: MolluscaBase (2015). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species on 2016-02-06.
3. 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.
4. 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.