Atlantic triton snail

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Atlantic triton snail
Charonia variegata, Crete, Greece (Mediterranean)

Charonia variegata , Crete , Greece (Mediterranean)

Systematics
Partial order : Littorinimorpha
Superfamily : Cassoidea
Family : Triton snails (Ranellidae)
Subfamily : Cymatiinae
Genre : Charonia
Type : Atlantic triton snail
Scientific name
Charonia variegata
( Lamarck , 1816)
Housing of Charonia variegata

The Atlantic tritone snail ( Charonia variegata ) is a snail from the tritone snail family (genus Charonia ) that feeds primarily on echinoderms . It lives in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and is one of the largest snails living today.

features

The conical snail shell of Charonia variegata , which in adult snails reaches about 33 cm, sometimes 37.5 cm in length, has an elongated, pointed thread without knots. However, this is more compact than the thread of the Pacific conch Charonia tritonis . The siphon channel is very short. The younger whorls are irregularly inflated, drawn with varices and have a bulge above the seam, which descends in an irregular spiral. Parietal is a narrow, dark brown inner lip with regular, spirally arranged white folds. The outer lip has pairs of white teeth on the inside on square dark brown spots. The surface of the house is creamy white with brown crescent-shaped spots.

The body of the snail is yellowish to orange with dense dark red to brown spots. The antennae, at the widened base of which sit the eyes, are yellow with two black rings.

distribution

The Atlantic triton snail occurs on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean including the Caribbean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea . In the western Mediterranean and parts of the Atlantic, it is replaced by the knot-bearing Triton snail ( Charonia lampas ).

habitat

Charonia variegata lives in the intertidal zone and below in depths of up to at least 384 meters, also on coral reefs .

Life cycle

Like other gill snails , Atlantic triton snails are segregated. The male mates with the female with his penis . The female lays the eggs in clusters of solid oval egg capsules, from which the Veliger larvae hatch after a few weeks . The larvae go through a pelagic phase lasting more than three months , so that the snail is widely distributed via the transatlantic currents. During the metamorphosis to the finished snail, the shell is already longer than 5 mm. These are the largest known Veliger larvae in the Atlantic.

nutrition

An Atlantic triton snail eats a starfish

Charonia variegata feeds primarily on echinoderms (Echinodermata). With the snail's acidic saliva, the prey animals are paralyzed and their calcareous skeletons softened. Depending on its size and consistency, the prey is swallowed whole or drilled in one place and then eaten away. Observations in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1950s showed that the triton snail has a fairly wide range of food in addition to its preferred prey, starfish and sea ​​urchins . Sea cucumbers , mussels , snails and even young Caribbean lobsters fell victim to the Triton snails . In the latter case, a lobster still resisted when the snail was already boring a hole between the abdomen and the carapace . The preferred prey apparently also influenced the color of the shell , after having consumed the orange starfish Echinaster sentus on a massive scale, it was very colorful, while it was rather pale after the predominant consumption of sea urchins.

Danger

The Atlantic triton snail is collected because of the imposing housing. According to the German Federal Species Protection Ordinance ( Appendix 1 ), the populations of the Mediterranean are protected.

Systematics

Charonia variegata is considered by some biologists as a subspecies of Charonia tritonis , Charonia tritonis variegata , but according to WoRMS it is recognized as a separate species.

literature

  • Betty Jean Piech: Ranellidae and Personidae: A Classification of Recent Species. Delaware Museum of Natural History, Wilmington Del. 1995, OCLC 33600855 , 60 pp.
  • Frank Riedel: Origin and evolution of the "higher" "Caenogastropoda. Berliner Geoscientific Abhandlungen, Series E, Volume 32, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89582-077-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sealifebase: Charonia variegata (Lamarck, 1816), Atlantic triton's trumpet
  2. ↑ John J. Welch: The "Island Rule" and Deep-Sea Gastropods: Re-Examining the Evidence . In: PLOS ONE . tape 5 , no. 1 , January 19, 2010, ISSN  1932-6203 , p. e8776 , doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0008776 .
  3. ↑ Example images on WoRMS : Charonia variegata, Crete (Greece), Author: Pillon, Roberto , Charonia variegata, Milos (Greece), Author: Pillon, Roberto
  4. ↑ Rudolph S. Scheltema: Larval dispersal as a means of genetic exchange between geographically separated populations of shallow-water benthic marine gastropods. (PDF file; 4.6 MB). In: Biol. Bull. 140, pp. 284-322, April 1971.
  5. ↑ Peter L. Perchade: Observations on the gastropod, Charonia variegata, in Trinidad and Tobago. In: Nautilus. Volume 85 (3), 1972, pp. 84-92, archive.org .
  6. ↑ mare-mundi.eu: Facts (invertebrates) - Family Ranellidae (formerly Cymatiidae), Triton snails
  7. ↑ In Annex 1 (to § 1) of the Federal Species Protection Ordinance No. 26, the triton horns are listed under the names Charonia tritonis ("only populations of the Mediterranean", therefore subspecies Charonia tritonis variegata ) and Charonia rubicunda , which, according to WoRMS, are synonyms for Charonia variegata and Charonia lampas are.
  8. ↑ World Register of Marine Species , World Marine Mollusca database: Charonia tritonis (Lamarck, 1816): accepted , Charonia tritonis variegata Lamarck, 1816: unaccepted

Web links

Commons : Charonia variegata  - Collection of images, videos and audio files