1: polyp colony with scale. 2: magnified hydrothecae. 3 & 4: magnified gonothecae.
Many species of Doto are thought to restrict their feeding to a single species of hydroid. Lemche (1985, in Picton & Morrow 2016) opined that Doto onusta Hesse, 1872, specializes on Dynamena pumila. However, many adult Doto specimens found on Dynamena pumila (an easily identified hydroid species) in the Menai Strait have subepidermal red pigment in the mesial face of their cerata, which is indicative of Doto coronata (see 33 Doto coronata. Menai Strait, Wales March 2010. ), and none resembled Hesse’s description or the image tentatively identified as Doto onusta in Picton & Morrow (2016) at www.habitas.org.uk/marinelife/species.asp?item=W12860 .
The two views that
a) Doto coronata feeds on hydroids generally;
and
b) D. coronata s.l. is a complex of species that specialize on different hydroids;
are not mutually exclusive as some species have been successfully segregated from the complex, but the remaining D. coronata s.s. can still be a general feeder, as described by Shipman & Gosliner (2015).