Aplysia lobata, BERGH, 1908

Golestani, Haleh, Crocetta, Fabio, Padula, Vinicius, Camacho-García, Yolanda, Langeneck, Joachim, Poursanidis, Dimitris, Pola, Marta, Yokeş, M. Baki, Cervera, Juan Lucas, Jung, Dae-Wui, Gosliner, Terrence M., Araya, Juan Francisco, Hooker, Yuri, Schrödl, Michael & Valdés, Ángel, 2019, The little Aplysia coming of age: from one species to a complex of species complexes in Aplysia parvula (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Heterobranchia), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 187, pp. 279-330 : 322

APLYSIA LOBATA BERGH, 1908

Aplysia lobata Bergh, 1908: 8 , pl. 2, figs 8–12. Type locality: Woodstock Beach, Table Bay , South Africa. Type: Probably lost, not at NHMD (K. Jensen, pers. comm.)

Remarks

Bergh (1908) introduced the name Aplysia lobata based on a single specimen collected from Woodstock Beach, Table Bay, Cape Town, South Africa, which no longer exists after the land reclamation of Table Bay in the 1950s to create the Cape Town foreshore ( Worden 1994). Bergh (1908) described the species providing numerous details of the external and internal anatomy, but no descriptions of the live animal. The identity of this species is controversial; Eales (1960) placed A. lobata in synonymy of A. parvula but at the same time commented it could be a juvenile A. dactylomela Rang, 1828 . Although Bergh’s (1908) description of A. lobata is very detailed, we cannot positively identify this species. The radular teeth included only three outer laterals and the jaw elements have a single cusp. However, the penis was not fully dissected and was illustrated within the penial sheath. Bergh (1908) also indicated that the parapodia had a curious lobed shape, so symmetrical that it would be unlikely to be the result of mutilation. A similar lobe is found in live species of the Aplysia elongata-nigrocincta complex, which also have a similar radular morphology to that of A. lobata . However, because of the absence of detailed penial descriptions, we hesitate to place A. lobata in synonymy of any other species in the A. elongata-nigrocincta complex. The original type material of A. lobata is probably lost, which further hampers our ability to identify this species. Therefore, we regard A. lobata as a taxon inquirendum.