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The suborder Aplysiomorpha or Sea hares (Aplysia species and related genera) are very large sea slugs with a soft internal shell made of protein. These are marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamilies Aplysioidea and Akeroidea. The common name "sea hare" derives from their rounded shape and from the two long rhinophores that project upwards from their heads and that somewhat resemble rabbit ears. This suborder is still called in many older textbooks and websites as Anaspidea. The original author P. Fischer described the taxon Anaspidea at unspecified rank above family [1]. In 1925 Thiele established the taxon Anaspidea as a suborder. But since the taxon Anaspidea was not based on an existing genus, this name is no longer available. It has been replaced in the new Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005) by the clade Aplysiomorpha . The scientific name for the order in which they used to be classified, the Anaspidea, is derived from the Greek for "without a shield" and refers to the lack of the characteristic head shield found in the cephalaspidean opisthobranchs. Many anaspideans have only a thin, internal and much-reduced shell with a small mantle cavity; some have no shell at all. All species have a radula and gizzard plates.
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