---
title: Maridadi Hypselodoris (Hypselodoris maridadilus)
scientific_name: Hypselodoris maridadilus
common_name: Maridadi Hypselodoris
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2024-04-05T19:31:48.371Z
updated: 2026-08-14T13:47:51.936Z
tags: Maridadi Hypselodoris, Hypselodoris maridadilus, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/maridadi-hypselodoris
---

# Maridadi Hypselodoris (*Hypselodoris maridadilus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 4 cm
- **Depth:** 2-30 m
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Rubble and rock with encrusting sponges
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- deep blue-violet body with three or four fine yellow-orange longitudinal lines
- bright orange-red gills and rhinophores
- narrow pale mantle margin
- length up to 4 cm

Deep blue-violet with fine orange lines and a crown of orange-red gills - four centimeters (1.6 in) of nudibranch that photographs better than almost anything else this size.

The two clubs at the front are the reason it finds anything at all. Rhinophores are chemical sensors, folded into lamellae to increase surface area, and a nudibranch uses them to smell the water for its sponge, for predators, and for other members of its species - which it then follows by scent trail. A slug that moves a few meters a day cannot afford to search at random.

They are also the first thing a fish would bite, which is why they retract into pockets at a touch. The gills do the same, folding down into a sheath in a fraction of a second.

It eats sponges and stores what it takes from them, like the rest of its family. The species was described in 1977 and named with the Swahili word *maridadi* - decorated, ornamental - which is fair.

## Also known as

- **English:** Beautiful Split-tooth Dorid
- **Japanese:** クチナシイロウミウシ
- **Russian:** Хипселодорис-конфетка

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chromodoris lineata* (Souleyet, 1852)
- *Doris lineata* Souleyet, 1852
- *Hypselodoris lineata* (Souleyet, 1852)

## Range

Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzanian Exclusive Economic Zone

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/maridadi-hypselodoris)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*