Trapania luquei

Trapania luquei  Ortea, 1989

Trapania luquei by Ortea J. et al.

Description
With a recorded body size of about 9 mm, the coloration of this species is characterized by having the back of the body and the tail white, sprinkled with bright yellow spots, in an irregular distribution. The flanks are blackish with small white areas (with no pigmentation). On the head there is a yellow spot that extends along the base of the palps; the rest of the palps have a black spot towards their middle area and a white apex. The body appendages located on the outside of the rhinophores and the gill are white with black spots, denser on the rear ones, which are up to three times larger than the front ones. The rhinophores are topped by eight lamellae, the three lower ones completely black, the next four only bordered with black and the last one, plus the apex, white. The gill is formed by three thick leaves, little branched and spotted with black and yellow. The foot is white on the sole and black on the back of its anterior expansions.

Biology
The specimen used to describe the species was found at a depth of about 3 metres. It is believed to feed on entoprocts, like the other species of the genus. Other details of its biology are unknown.

Etymology

• Trapania. The original generic name of this species was Drepania, proposed by Lafont in 1874. Pruvot-Fol in 1931 proposed changing the generic name to Trapania to disambiguate it from Drepania Hübner, 1816 (a group of lepidoptera). Madame Pruvot-Fol does not indicate the origin of the name, but there are two theories: the first would be dedicated to the city of Trapani, the province capital of western Sicily; the second would be inspired on the original generic name Drepania, derived from the Greek “Drepane” which means “sickle” and presumably refers to the shape of the appendages located on the sides of the rhinophores and gills in this genus. Pruvot Fol would have chosen the new name on the basis that it has the same meaning, but not the same sound and thus avoid confusion.
• Luquei. Named for Prof. Dr. Ángel Antonio Luque del Villar, malacologyst, professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and who was first secretary of Sociedad Española de Malacologia.

Distribution
This species has only been reported in Cape Verde (Ortea, 1989; Rolán, 2005). It has been erroneously reported from the Canary Islands (Moro, Ortea & Bacallado, 1997; Ortea et al. 2001 and Moro et al. 2003), but these reports correspond to Trapania bajamarensis, a species also reported from Cape Verde.

More pictures

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Bibliography

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Bibliography based on the works by Steve Long, 2006. Bibliography of Opisthobranchia 1554-2000 and Gary McDonald, 2009. Bibliographia Nudibranchia, with later updates from other resources.

Further reading

• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Flickr pictures
• Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera
• NCBI GenBank
• OBIS - Search by Taxon
• World Register of Marine Species

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