---
title: Oriental Polybranchia (Polybranchia orientalis)
scientific_name: Polybranchia orientalis
common_name: Oriental Polybranchia
taxon: Sap-sucking slugs
published: 2026-08-07T16:29:44.216Z
updated: 2026-08-20T17:11:26.000Z
tags: Oriental Polybranchia, Polybranchia orientalis, Sap-sucking slugs, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/sap-sucking-slugs/oriental-polybranchia
---

# Oriental Polybranchia (*Polybranchia orientalis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sap-sucking slugs (*Sacoglossa*)
- **Size:** up to 5 cm
- **Depth:** 1-20 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Algal turf and rubble on sheltered reef
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- back crowded with flattened leaf-shaped cerata
- green to brown with fine pale veining on each ceras
- cerata shed readily when disturbed
- length up to 5 cm

A sacoglossan to about 5 cm (2 in) whose back is crowded with flattened leaf-shaped cerata, each veined with fine pale lines, so that a resting animal reads as a small clump of weed rather than as a slug. Color runs green to brown depending on what it has been eating.

The cerata are both camouflage and defense: they detach when the animal is attacked and go on moving, and they hold the chloroplasts drained from algal cells, which keep photosynthesising inside the slug. Feeding is done with a radula reduced to a single tooth per row - the sacoglossan solution to a diet of cell contents rather than tissue, and the reason the whole group is confined to a handful of green algae. Nocturnal and well hidden, it is one of the harder members of the group to find on these reefs.

## Also known as

- **English:** Oriental Polybranchia
- **Japanese:** カンランウミウシ
- **Chinese:** 東方美葉海蛞蝓
- **Russian:** Полибранхия восточная

## Scientific synonyms

- *Branchophyllum orientale* (Kelaart, 1858)
- *Phyllobranchillus orientalis* (Kelaart, 1858)
- *Phyllobranchus orientalis* (Kelaart, 1858)
- *Proctonotus orientalis* Kelaart, 1858

## Range

Philippines

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/sap-sucking-slugs/oriental-polybranchia)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*