---
title: Chromodoris Quadricolor (Chromodoris quadricolor)
scientific_name: Chromodoris quadricolor
common_name: Chromodoris Quadricolor
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2023-12-25T10:29:23.162Z
updated: 2026-08-12T14:01:02.440Z
tags: Chromodoris Quadricolor, Chromodoris quadricolor, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/chromodoris-quadricolor
---

# Chromodoris Quadricolor (*Chromodoris quadricolor*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 4.5 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef and rubble, on and around red Latrunculia sponges
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- white body with broad black stripes and a bright orange rim all round
- orange-red rhinophores and gill plume, both retractable
- usually on or beside a red encrusting sponge
- length up to 4.5 cm

White, striped in black, edged all round in bright orange, with orange rhinophores and gills. Up to 4.5 cm (1.8 in), and the nudibranch that ends up on the cover of Red Sea guidebooks - it is common here and scarce elsewhere.

It eats one thing. The red encrusting sponge Latrunculia is its food and effectively its address; the slug rasps it, sequesters the sponge's toxins - latrunculins, which disrupt the internal scaffolding of animal cells - and stores them in the mantle rim, exactly where a fish would bite. Those compounds are now standard laboratory reagents in cell biology, taken from a sponge found by following a sea slug.

The orange edge is the warning label, and it works well enough to be worth copying: several unrelated Red Sea slugs wear a similar pattern, and predators that learn on one avoid the rest.

Eggs go down as a flat spiral ribbon of pink-orange, usually stuck to the sponge itself, so the hatchlings settle where the food is. The adult lives less than a year.

## Also known as

- **English:** striped pyjama nudibranch, Pyjama Slug
- **Hebrew:** זרית ססגונית
- **French:** Doris-pyjama
- **Italian:** Cromodoride pigiama, Cromodoride quadricolore
- **German:** Gestreifte Pyjamaschnecke, Pyjama-Sternschnecke
- **Dutch:** Pyamanaaktslak
- **Czech:** hvězdnatka čtyřbarevná
- **Japanese:** キベリクロスジウミウシ
- **KO:** 청줄무늬갯민숭달팽이

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chromodoris quadricolor quadricolor* (Rüppell & Leuckart, 1830)
- *Doris quadricolor* Rüppell & Leuckart, 1830
- *Glossodoris quadricolor* (Rüppell & Leuckart, 1828)

## Range

Kenya, North Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/chromodoris-quadricolor)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*