Brown-spotted warthog
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Brown-spotted warthog ( Onchidoris bilamellata ) |
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| Onchidoris bilamellata | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1767) |
The brown-spotted warthog ( Onchidoris bilamellata ) is a nudibranch snail that feeds on barnacles . It is common in the Atlantic and its marginal seas, the English Channel and the North Sea .
description
The egg-shaped brown spotted warthog grows up to four centimeters long. The back ( notum ) of the snail has brown spots on a pale yellow background and slightly pink, pointed, club-shaped warts (papillae), which can also be found within the gill rim. This coloring makes for an excellent camouflage. The pale to light brown rhinophores on the head have up to 16 lamellae. At the rear end of the body are two half-wreaths with a total of 16 to 32 feather gills .
Habitat and Distribution
The brown-spotted warthog occurs in mostly colder sea areas on hard floors and mussel beds in the intertidal zone to depths of around 20 m. Their distribution area includes the northern Atlantic and the North Sea from Great Britain and France to Norway , Iceland and Greenland and along the Atlantic coast of North America south to Connecticut . There are also finds from the northern Pacific in the Bering Sea and from Alaska to southern California .
food
The adult animal feeds on barnacles , which are drilled and then consumed. Preferred prey animals belong to the barnacles Elminius and Balanus . With the rachis teeth of the radula , parts of the upper limestone plates of the barnacles are chewed off, so that the snail can reach the meat of the prey through the gaps. Young animals, however, prefer bog animals .
literature
- Joshua Alder , Albany Hancock (1851): Descriptions of two new species of nudibranchiate Mollusca, one of them forming the type of a new genus . Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 2, No. 8 (46), pp. 290-302, plates 9-10.
- Paul Naylor: Great British Marine Animals , 2nd Edition. Sound Diving Publications, Deltor 2005. ISBN 0-9522831-5-8
- John D. Fish, Susan Fish: A Student's Guide to the Seashore . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011. 540 pages. Onchidorididae, Onchidoris bilamellata (Linnaeus) , p. 246.
Web links
- WB Rudman (June 18, 2001): Onchidoris bilamellata (Linnaeus, 1767) . Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney.
- Peter Jonas: Brown-spotted star snail, Onchidoris bilamellata (Linné 1767) (unterwasser-welt-ostsee.de, accessed on July 23, 2016)
- S. Gofas (2008): Onchidoris bilamellata (Linnaeus, 1767) . MolluscaBase (2016), WoRMS .
- BE Picton, CC Morrow (2016): Onchidoris bilamellata (Linnaeus, 1767) . Encyclopedia of Marine Life of Britain and Ireland.