Phrikoceros? A
1st, 3rd, 4th photos: Cory Pittman, Kapalua Bay, Maui. < 16 ft. Size: 20 mm.
2nd photo: Cory Pittman, Kapalua Bay, Maui. < 14 ft

Body ovoid. Background color light brown, paler at the margins, and entirely covered with closely-spaced parallel white lines that emanate from the head and run back, curving parallel to the edge of the body, to meet posteriorily. Small, dark brown spots sparsely distributed dorsally. Pseudotentacles square and ruffled.

Cory has found two of these unusual lined flatworms at Kapalua Bay, Maui, over a period of years. Nothing like them appears on the Newman & Cannon CD. The species is probably in the genus Phrikoceros due to the shape of the pseudotentacles. A photo from the Philippines by Mike Miller matches it quite well; it also appears on p. 47 of Reef Creature Identification, Tropical Pacific by Humann & DeLoach as Phrikoceros sp.1, photographed in Alor, Indonesia

Genus Phrikoceros is tentative. See https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/268572187

BACK to streaks or lines