---
title: Branched Soft Coral Eater (Phyllodesmium poindimiei)
scientific_name: Phyllodesmium poindimiei
common_name: Branched Soft Coral Eater
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2026-07-17T15:53:26.952Z
updated: 2026-08-16T07:37:22.428Z
tags: Branched Soft Coral Eater, Phyllodesmium poindimiei, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/branched-soft-coral-eater
---

# Branched Soft Coral Eater (*Phyllodesmium poindimiei*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 50 mm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Corallivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** On soft corals such as Telesto and Carijoa, on reef and in channels
- **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer

## How to recognise it

- translucent white to bluish body with fine white spots
- smooth finger-like cerata with coiled or spiraled tips
- yellowish branching digestive gland visible inside each ceras
- up to 50 mm

Aeolid sea slugs are famous for stealing weapons. They eat animals with stinging cells, pass the cells through the gut without firing them, and store them live in sacs at the tips of the cerata on their back, so a slug that eats a hydroid ends up armed with the hydroid's sting.

This one does not. It has no cnidosacs at all. Nor does it do the other trick this genus is known for - some of its relatives farm symbiotic algae in their cerata and run partly on sunlight - and it has none of those either. It feeds on soft corals, Telesto and Carijoa, scraping them with a small radula, and it comes away with no defense whatsoever.

What it does instead is give away a piece of itself. Attacked, by a swimming crab for instance, it sheds cerata, and the discarded ones go on writhing where they fell while the slug walks off in the other direction. They grow back.

It is a delicate, nearly transparent animal with spiral-tipped cerata and a branching yellow gland showing inside each one, and it lives about a year.

## Also known as

- **English:** Branched Soft Coral Eater, Poindimie's Phyllodesmium, Sea slug
- **Japanese:** ハナビラミノウミウシ
- **Russian:** Ветвистый пожиратель мягких кораллов

## Scientific synonyms

- *Aeolidia poindimiei* Risbec, 1928
- *Phidiana tenuis* Eliot, 1905

## Range

Mozambique, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/branched-soft-coral-eater)*
*Updated: August 16, 2026*