About Aplysia parvula Mörch, 1863
Aplysia parvula Mörch, 1863, commonly called the dwarf sea hare, has a round body, smooth skin, and a slender head with extensions that look like rabbit ears. It has wing-like flaps called parapodia that extend from its body. The body colour ranges from brown to maroon or olive green, and may be covered in clusters of white spots. The maximum recorded body length of this species is 60 mm. Aplysia parvula was long considered a circumtropical sea hare species. However, in 2019, Golestani et al. restricted the name A. parvula to only the population found in tropical northwest Atlantic waters. They resurrected the names A. elongata, A. japonica, A. atromarginata, and A. nigrocincta for Indo-Pacific populations, and described the new species A. ghanimii and A. hooveri for eastern Pacific populations. The type locality of Aplysia parvula is Saint Vincent, Lesser Antilles. For this species, the minimum recorded depth is 0.5 m, while the maximum recorded depth is 30 m. It most commonly occurs at depths of less than 5 m, and is only occasionally found at depths up to 24 m. This species is a herbivore that feeds on various types of algae. Its egg mass is a tangled mass of sticky orange, green or brown strings, which is found under rocks or among algae.
