---
title: Painted Goniobranchus (Goniobranchus tinctorius)
scientific_name: Goniobranchus tinctorius
common_name: Painted Goniobranchus
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2026-07-28T13:54:52.774Z
updated: 2026-08-14T13:53:36.223Z
tags: Painted Goniobranchus, Goniobranchus tinctorius, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/painted-goniobranchus
---

# Painted Goniobranchus (*Goniobranchus tinctorius*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 4 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sponge-covered rock and rubble on shallow reef
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- white body covered in a fine network of red-brown lines
- broad mantle skirt, wider than the foot, with a yellow and purple margin
- white gills and rhinophores tipped in red
- length up to 4 cm

White under a fine net of red-brown lines, with a mantle skirt that overhangs the body all the way round and a yellow and purple edge to it. Four centimeters (1.6 in), described from this sea in 1830.

That overhanging skirt is not just decoration. Members of this genus flap it - lifting and dropping the mantle margin in a slow, deliberate rhythm when they are disturbed, which displays the colored rim and, in some species, wafts the chemistry stored in it into the water. A slug that cannot run has to make being noticed work in its favor.

Underneath it is doing what chromodorids do: eating encrusting sponges, extracting their terpenoids intact, and storing them in glands around the mantle edge.

The genus name changed recently - these were all *Chromodoris* until the group was split - so photographs of this animal are filed under both names online, and older books use the other one.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red-netted Goniobranch, Red-netted Goniobranchus, Reticulated Goniobranch
- **French:** Doris réticulée rouge
- **Japanese:** サラサウミウシ
- **Chinese:** 染斑多彩海蛞蝓, 殘舊多彩海麒麟
- **KO:** 망사갯민숭달팽이

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chromodoris tinctoria* (Rüppell & Leuckart, 1830)
- *Doris tinctoria* Rüppell & Leuckart, 1830

---

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