---
title: Hurghada Hypselodoris (Hypselodoris ghardaqana)
scientific_name: Hypselodoris ghardaqana
common_name: Hurghada Hypselodoris
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2024-10-03T22:31:50.490Z
updated: 2026-08-16T08:56:52.654Z
tags: Hurghada Hypselodoris, Hypselodoris ghardaqana, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/hurghada-hypselodoris
---

# Hurghada Hypselodoris (*Hypselodoris ghardaqana*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** 50 mm
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sponge-covered reef and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer

## How to recognise it

- pale cream to bluish mantle with a yellow-orange border
- dark spots scattered over the mantle, fewer and more spaced than on the pretty hypselodoris
- rhinophores and gill plumes darker than the mantle
- up to 50 mm

Two slugs in this sea wear almost the same coat: a pale mantle, a yellow-orange rim, and dark spots. They are not close relatives. One of them is this animal, the other is the pretty hypselodoris, and the resemblance is not coincidence.

When a harmless species copies a dangerous one, that is Batesian mimicry and the copy is a free rider. This is the other kind. Both of these slugs take chemical defenses out of the sponges they eat and store them in the mantle, so both are genuinely unpleasant, and by sharing one pattern they share the cost of teaching it. Every fish that learns the lesson on one species learns it for both, and fewer of each get eaten in the process of teaching it. Mullerian mimicry, and it is why so many warning patterns in the sea look alike.

The species was described from Ghardaqa, which is what Hurghada used to be called, and that is where its name comes from. It also turns up across the Indian Ocean.

To separate the two underwater, count spots: this one carries fewer and they sit further apart.

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chromodoris ghardagana* [sic]
- *Chromodoris ghardaqana* Gohar & Aboul-Ela, 1957
- *Risbecia ghardaqana* (Gohar & Aboul-Ela, 1957)

---

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