NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 231 April 1977 Page 7 
INCONSPICUOUS GASTROPODS 
Dorothy Raeihle 
They are small and soft and have no shells. They are "sea slugs," 
sacoglossans and nudibranchs. They live on marine growths in the 
intertidal zone and in salt marshes and shallows. A number of spe- 
cies are to be found in Long Island waters: In NOTES No$ 200:7-8 
and 214:2-4, Ronald Rozsa listed 21 species that he either person- 
ally collected or found recorded from this area. The species here 
illustrated is the sacoglossan SEL Taee fuscatus (Gould, 1870), 
which ranges from New Hampshire to rginia. 
When Augustus Addison Gould described this species he called it 
Calliopaea (?) fuscata (INVERTEBRATA OF MASSACHUSETTS, 2nd ed. 1870, 
p. 250, pl. XVI figs. 218-221). His excellent figures 219-221 are 
reproduced in Abbott's AMERICAN SEASHELLS, 1974, No. 4143, p. 340. 
We first collected Stiliger fuscatus in 1963. At that time we had 
herbivores in the aquarium for which we collected fine seaweeds, and 
when algae-covered pebbles were briskly rinsed in sea water before 
putting them in the aquarium the little creatures would swim free. 
They were collected thus by chance and only occasionally during the 
next few years, on material from Center Island Beach at Bayville 
and from Long Beach Bay back of Orient Beach State Park. George 
Raeihle photographed the largest specimen, a good-sized adult 7mm 
long, and made the accompanying drawing from the color slide. 
The Stiliger lived up to three months in captivity, remaining dark 
(fuscatus means "dusky") while they fed on green algae, but changing 
to a medium brown when they had available only the brown algae that 
grew on the walls of the aquarium. Unfortunately, attempts to pre- 
serve them were unsuccessful. 
The drawing of the radular tooth is as figured by Ernst Marcus in 
his anatomical study of this species in American Museum NOVITATES, 
1958, No. 1906. We quote: "The radula consists of four teeth in the 
ascending limb, 11 in the descending limb, and 25 in the ascus. The 
shape of the teeth is that usual with the genus; the cusp is 82n, 
the base 55, long." (One uw = one one-thousandth of a millimeter.) 
Radular tooth 

Stiliger fuscatus (Gould, 1870) 
