---
title: Simple Rainbow Dorid (Verconia simplex)
scientific_name: Verconia simplex
common_name: Simple Rainbow Dorid
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2026-08-28T06:34:10.849Z
updated: 2026-08-28T12:20:11.790Z
tags: Simple Rainbow Dorid, Verconia simplex, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/simple-rainbow-dorid
---

# Simple Rainbow Dorid (*Verconia simplex*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 1.2 cm
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Sponge-covered reef and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- orange band at the mantle margin and orange tips on the gills
- nothing at all on the back between them
- white to pale pink body, translucent
- twelve millimeters, the smallest chromodorid here

Twelve millimeters (0.5 in) and there is nothing on it. That is not a failure of description; it is the species.

The body is white to pale pink and translucent. There is an orange band around the mantle margin. The tips of the gills are orange. Between those two things the back is empty: no spots, no lines, no second band, no markings of any kind. The name means exactly what it says.

That emptiness is a diagnosis rather than a gap, because the small pale chromodorids on this reef are separated precisely by what is drawn on them. One of its relatives carries a white ring around the gills, another a white stripe down the midline with purple spots inside the rim, a third a plain yellow-orange margin at twice this size. If the animal is under a centimeter and a half, has an orange rim, orange gill tips and a blank back, the list is finished.

What it does is what the whole family does. It grazes sponges, keeps their defensive chemistry instead of digesting it, and packs the compounds toward the mantle edge, which is why something the size of a lentil crawls about in daylight where anything could see it.

It is well recorded across the tropical Pacific, from Australia to New Caledonia and the Marshall Islands, and thinly so at this end of its range.

## Also known as

- **English:** Simple Rainbow Dorid
- **Japanese:** シロウサギウミウシ
- **Chinese:** 簡單多彩海蛞蝓
- **Russian:** Веркония простая

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chromodoris simplex* Pease, 1871
- *Hypselodoris kayae* D. K. Young, 1967
- *Noumea simplex* (Pease, 1871)

## Range

Mozambique

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/simple-rainbow-dorid)*
*Updated: August 28, 2026*