At 09:41 PM 1/3/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm curious about color forms of the Single-toothed Simnia.
>I collected an orange form on orange gorgonia during low tides last week.
>I've found yellow and purple at a number of places, but hadn't heard of
>this form. I also got word that a white form has also been found. Any
>others out there? What were they feeding on?
 
Phil,
 
The only ones I have ever found were purple, exact matches for the purple
host gorgonians they were found on...always hidden in the curls at the edges
of the fans. (Despite careful storage in dark, covered cases, they have
faded to a blue-gray.)  Once I found a pinkish one on a pink finger-type
gorgonian, but I never got back to dry land with it. . .mysterious vanishing
act.  So I didn't get to check its id - whether acicularis or uniplicata. It
has always been my understanding that the shell coloration is derived from
the host gorgonian color. And somewhere I remember seeing (or maybe just
reading about) a specimen which switched colors from purple to yellow when
placed on a different fan. I have some very small reddish ones which were
taken in a dredging. There were four and fragments, and they were not on a
host, but there were bits of reddish fan in the dredged material.
 
Lynn Scheu