---
title: Contour-nosed Rainbow Dorid (Verconia sudanica)
scientific_name: Verconia sudanica
common_name: Contour-nosed Rainbow Dorid
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2026-08-26T11:10:34.421Z
updated: 2026-08-26T11:47:37.601Z
tags: Contour-nosed Rainbow Dorid, Verconia sudanica, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/contour-nosed-rainbow-dorid
---

# Contour-nosed Rainbow Dorid (*Verconia sudanica*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 2 cm
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Sponge-covered reef and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- translucent white body with a single yellow-orange line around the margin
- no spots, no second band, no internal lines: the plain rim is the identification
- the darker mass of the internal organs shows through the middle of the back
- two centimeters, low and soft-edged

This is a small white slug with one orange line around it, and in a section this crowded that plainness is the whole diagnosis.

The reef carries at least half a dozen small pale chromodorids with a colored rim, and the way through them is to count and to look at what else is on the back. This one has nothing else. No spots, no inner band, no lines running fore and aft: a translucent white mantle with a single yellow-orange margin, and that is the animal. The white is thin enough that the darker mass of the viscera shows through the center of the back, which is a good confirmation once you are close.

Its name is a piece of history that is quietly falling apart. It was described in 1985 from material collected off Sudan, and for years it was treated as a Red Sea species. Records since have come from Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa, which makes it a western Indian Ocean animal that happened to be found here first. That pattern is common in this fauna: a species is described from wherever a specialist happened to be diving, and the name records the collector's itinerary rather than the animal's range.

It is a sponge feeder, it holds the sponge's chemistry in the mantle like the rest of its family, and it crawls in the open in daylight because it can afford to.

## Also known as

- **English:** Contour-nosed Rainbow Dorid
- **Russian:** Веркония суданская

## Scientific synonyms

- *Noumea sudanica* Rudman, 1985

## Range

Red Sea, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/contour-nosed-rainbow-dorid)*
*Updated: August 26, 2026*