Conus anemone
| Conus anemone | ||||||||||||
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Enclosure of Conus anemone |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus anemone | ||||||||||||
| Lamarck , 1810 |
Conus anemone is the species name of a screw from the family of the cone snails (genus Conus ), which on the coasts of Australia is used and from Vielborstern - in particular Nereididae and Eunicidae - fed.
features
Conus anemone has a moderately small to large, moderately light to firm snail shell that reaches 3 to 9 cm in length in adult snails. The circumference of the body is bulbous, conical to ovoid, sometimes conical cylindrical or pear-shaped, the outline on the shoulder slightly to strongly convex, rarely S-shaped. The left side is often alternately concave above the base. The shoulder is angled, sometimes only almost angled. The thread is high to low, its outline straight to concave. The hook-like protoconch with irregularly arranged tiny grains has about two to two and a half whorls and measures a maximum of 1.3 mm. The first 2 to 5 whorls of the teleoconch are covered with tubercles. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch are flat and steep to horizontal with 2 to 3 to 7 to 10 increasing spiral grooves. The way around the body is very variable in its sculpting: it often has tightly packed, uniformly wide spiral ribs that extend from the base to the shoulder, but occasionally it can only have a few, stronger ribs further apart at the base. In largely smooth cases, the spiral ribs are weak and limited to the area at the base, while spiral threads follow towards the shoulder.
The basic color of the housing is white, cream, light blue, pink or light purple, with several of these colors usually merging on the same shell. The pattern on the perimeter of the body varies and consists of 2 to 3 spiral bands, alternating large spots, flaming, axial stripes and lines from orange or brown to reddish and blackish-brown in color. There are unspotted white or pink shells as well as housings with a dark brown covering color throughout, which only leaves a middle band in the basic color with a brown mesh pattern. In various numbers and arrangements, there are additional spiral rows of orange, reddish or blackish-brown strokes, which can alternate between dark color and basic color. The circumferences of the Protoconch are white, cream-colored, orange or brown, the seam ramps of the Teleoconch are alternately coated with brown radial stripes and spots, whereby there are both unspotted, strongly spotted threads. The inside of the case mouth is pale blue or purple with a brown tint or dark brown or orange, rarely white. On the northern coasts of Australia, the shells are usually darker than on the southern coasts.
The thin, translucent, smooth periostracum is light brown.
The snail itself is white with pinkish-gray spots. The top of the foot, the rostrum and the sipho are light pink on the edges. The siphon, foot, and mantle are dull white or pale gray and speckled light white. There are also brown or purple colored animals with lighter rostrum and sipho and a gray sole.
The radula teeth, which are connected to a venom gland , have a barb on the tip and a second barb on the opposite side. They are rather weakly serrated, ending in a point. There is a distinct spur at the base.
distribution and habitat
Conus anemone is widespread on the coasts of Australia from Queensland south to Western Australia and north to King Sound and on the northern coast of Tasmania .
It lives in the intertidal zone and at sea depths of up to 40 m on reefs, sandy subsoils or rocks. It often hides under stones, rocks, algae or seaweed. In north-west Australia the cone snail occurs in a depth of 6 m, in south-west Australia up to 30 m, the form peronianus in south Australia in 10 to 20 m water depth, the form carmeli up to 40 m.
Development cycle
Like all cone snails, Conus anemone is sexually separated and the male mates with the female with his penis . The female lays spherical to cuboid egg capsules in sheltered places under rocks or stones at a depth of 1 to 5 m under the sea, which are 7 to 11 mm long and 4 to 8 mm wide on Mornington Peninsula (Victoria), in Jervis Bay (New South Wales) 9 up to 12 mm long and 7 mm wide or 16 to 19 mm long and 9 to 12 mm wide. The capsules are attached to the hard substrate or to other capsules in often irregular layers on uniting basal plates. According to Huish (1978) there are about 65 eggs with an average diameter of about 590 µm in a capsule, from which it is concluded that the entire Veliger stage takes place in the capsule and that crawling snails hatch from it. Smith, Black and Shepherd observed exactly such small snails in 1989 when they hatched from 8 mm long and 3 mm wide capsules, each containing 15 to 60 eggs with a diameter of 300 to 500 µm. According to Kohn (1993), a capsule on the banks of Rottnest Island contained 16 to 22 egg-shaped eggs with lengths of 756 to 830 µm and widths of 671 to 744 µm, from which about 1.6 mm Veliconchae hatch.
nutrition
The prey of Conus anemone consists of erranten Vielborstern especially the families Eunicidae and Nereididae he with his Radulazähnen stands and using the poison out of his venom gland immobilized.
literature
- George Washington Tryon: Manual of Conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species , vol. VI; Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 1884. C [onus] anemone Lamarck., Pp. 69f.
- Jerry G. Walls: Cone Shells: A Synopsis of the Living Conidae. TFH Publications, Neptune (New Jersey) 1979. p. 95.
- Dieter Röckel, Werner Korn, Alan J. Kohn: Manual of the Living Conidae Vol. 1: Indo-Pacific Region . Verlag Christa Hemmen, Wiesbaden 1995. The texts on the individual cone snail species of the Indo-Pacific are published on The Conus Biodiversity website with the permission of the authors (see web links).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ PJ Huish: Factors influencing the distribution of Conus in east Australian waters. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 4, p. 232.
- ^ BJ Smith, JH Black, SA Shepherd: Molluscan egg masses and capsules. In: SA Shepherd, IM Thomas (ed.): Marine Invertebrates of Southern Australia, Part II. South Australian Government Printer, Adelaide 1989.
- ^ Alan J. Kohn: Development and life history of three temperate Australian species of Conus (Mollusca: Gastropoda) . In: Fred E. Wells (Ed.): The Marine Flora and Fauna of Rottnest Island, Western Australia. Western Australian Museum, Perth 1993. pp. 509-521.
- ↑ Alan J. Kohn, KN Almasi: Comparative ecology of a biogeographically heterogeneous Conus assemblage. In: Fred E. Wells (Ed.): The Marine Flora and Fauna of Rottnest Island, Western Australia. Western Australian Museum, Perth 1993. pp. 523-538.
- ^ Alan J. Kohn: Ecological and biogeographic attributes of Conus on the Indian Ocean's southernmost coral reefs. In: Fred E. Wells (Ed.): The Marine Flora and Fauna of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, Western Australia. Western Australian Museum, Perth 1997. pp. 113-131.
- ↑ Thomas F. Duda, Alan J. Kohn, Stephen R. Palumbi (2001): Origins of diverse feeding ecologies within Conus, a genus of venomous marine gastropods. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 73, pp. 391-409, here pp. 399, 409.