---
title: Lilac-spotted Tentacled Dorid (Discodoris cebuensis)
scientific_name: Discodoris cebuensis
common_name: Lilac-spotted Tentacled Dorid
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2026-08-26T11:10:34.398Z
updated: 2026-08-26T11:27:07.112Z
tags: Lilac-spotted Tentacled Dorid, Discodoris cebuensis, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/lilac-spotted-tentacled-dorid
---

# Lilac-spotted Tentacled Dorid (*Discodoris cebuensis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 4 cm
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Sponge-covered rubble and rock, out at night
- **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- brown back broken up by purple and cream patches
- wide flat mantle skirt standing out well beyond the foot
- the skirt is often ragged or notched, from pieces torn off in an earlier attack
- flattened profile, sitting close to the surface it is on

The wide flat skirt around this slug is not only camouflage. It is detachable, and losing part of it is a normal event in the life of the animal.

Dorid sea slugs carry a mantle that extends well beyond the foot on all sides, a thin overhanging rim that flattens the outline against the rock and removes any shadow. In this genus that rim is also a sacrificial part. Seized by a fish or a crab, the animal tears the gripped section of the margin away and leaves with the rest, and the detached piece goes on writhing for a while, which is exactly long enough to matter. It is the same trade a lizard makes with its tail, and it explains why so many photographs of these animals show a mantle edge with a bite-shaped gap or a healed notch in it.

The rest of it is worth a look for the pattern. Four centimeters (1.6 in) of brown back broken by purple and cream patches, irregular, with no line or margin to fix on: that patchwork is doing the same job the skirt does, breaking the animal into pieces that do not add up to a slug against sponge-covered rubble.

It eats sponges, it comes out after dark, and the sensible way to find one is to check the underside of loose rubble slabs with a torch and look for something with a torn edge.

## Also known as

- **English:** Lilac-spotted Tentacled Dorid
- **Japanese:** ムラクモウミウシ
- **Russian:** Дискодорис себуанский

## Range

Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone, South Africa

---

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