Felimare californiensis, common name the California blue dorid, is a species of colourful sea slug or dorid nudibranch, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Chromodorididae that eats dysideid sponges.Bouchet, P. (2012). Felimare californiensis. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species on 2012-05-11.Johnson R.F. & Gosliner T.M. (2012) Traditional taxonomic groupings mask evolutionary history: A molecular phylogeny and new classification of the chromodorid nudibranchs. PLoS ONE 7(4): e33479
Distribution This nudibranch is found in the Eastern Pacific Ocean along the Californian coast from Monterey Bay through Baja California.Rudman, W.B., 2000 (October 13) Hypselodoris californiensis (Bergh, 1879). [In] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. It became regionally extinct in the northern part of its range, disappearing completely from California by 1984. It reappeared beginning in 2003 and is now found in a few isolated places in California.Goddard, Jeffrey H. R., Maria C. Schaefer, Craig Hoover, Ángel Valdés, 2013. Regional extinction of a conspicuous dorid nudibranch (Mollusca: Gastropoda) in California, Marine Biology, 160(6):1497-1510 It has been shown to be synonymous with Felimare ghiselini.Hoover C.A., Padula V., Schrödl M., Hooker Y. & Valdés Á. (2017). Integrative taxonomy of the Felimare californiensis and F. ghiselini species complex (Nudibranchia: Chromodorididae), with description of a new species from Peru. Journal of Molluscan Studies. 83(4): 461-475.
Description Felimare californiensis has a blue mantle and foot with moderately large yellow-orange spots. The body grows to a length of 90 mm.Bertsch H. (1977) The Chromodoridinae nudibranchs from the Pacific coast of America.- Part I. Investigative methods and supra-specific taxonomy. The Veliger 20(2): 107-118Debelius, H. & Kuiter, R.H. (2007) Nudibranchs of the world. ConchBooks, Frankfurt, 360 pp. page(s): 108Valdés, Á. & Goddard, J., 2013. Felimare californiensis Miller, M. ed., The slug site, accessed 2018-12-30.
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