Pink through red, clustered with small white dots and edged in bright fuchsia, and no more than 2 cm (0.8 in) long. Size is what makes it rare rather than scarcity: an animal this small in rubble is found by people who are already looking at rubble, which is a smaller group than it should be.
Like its relatives it feeds on sessile prey, glides on cilia over a slick of its own mucus, and carries toxins in the skin that make the color worth advertising. What it does not have is a way to fight, run or hide, so the entire defense is the honesty of that signal.
The name is straightforwardly descriptive - red, and a dwarf even among flatworms - and dates from 1998. Much of this genus was described in the 1990s by Newman and Cannon working through the Indo-Pacific, which is why so many local species carry authorship younger than the divers photographing them.
- pink to red body with clusters of small white dots
- bright fuchsia margin
- tiny, about 2 cm
- usually deep in rubble rather than out in the open
