Conus flavus
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| Röckel , 1985 |
Conus flavus ( "yellow cone") is the name of a snail from the family of cone snails (genus Conus ), which in the western Pacific Ocean is widespread and fish eats.
features
Conus flavus bears a medium-sized, firm snail shell that reaches 5 to 6 cm in length in adult snails. The circumference of the body is almost cylindrical, the contour in the third at the apex is convex and rather straight towards the base. The thread is moderately high, its outline concave, the shoulder rounded. There are 4 to 5 spiral furrows on the circumference of the thread. On the periphery of the body, spiral furrows run in the third towards the base, sometimes in groups of two. Its entire surface is covered with 60 to 80 fine, spiral threads.
The basic color of the slightly shiny surface of the housing is straw yellow to orange-yellow, the shoulder lighter. In the Philippines, it can also be covered with chocolate-brown, axially oriented spots. The first 4 to 5 whorls of the case are completely brown. The inside of the case mouth is light on the edge and more orange on the inside. The translucent periostracum is dark brown, but the fine sculpting of the body is visible.
The foot of the snail is yellowish-brown. The proboscis is striped and resembles the arm of a brittle star .
The radula teeth , which are connected to a poison gland , have a fairly uniform, narrow shaft and have hardly any projections at the tip, but are sawn on a short piece with 5 to 8 blunt teeth that end in a point in the middle of the shaft. A spur sits at the base.
distribution and habitat
Conus flavus is distributed in a comparatively small part of the Indo-Pacific or the western Pacific Ocean around the Philippines , New Guinea , the Solomon Islands and Fiji . It lives in sea depths of 10 to 30 m from sand and muddy underground.
Development cycle
Like all cone snails, Conus flavus is sexually separate and the male mates with the female with his penis . Veliger larvae hatch from the egg capsules deposited by the female and swim freely before sinking down and metamorphosed into crawling snails .
nutrition
Conus flavus' prey consists of fish that it hunts at night and stings with its poisonous radula teeth . The striped proboscis resembles the arm of a brittle star and is apparently confused by fish with their prey. When the fish has swum close enough, the cone snail stabs it with its tooth, injects the poison and then pulls it back. In contrast to other fish-eating cone snails, the victim does not get stuck on the predator's tooth, but rather the snail follows the prey until it becomes immobile due to the poison, and then swallows it.
literature
- Dieter Röckel (1985): Conus flavus, a new conus species from the western Pacific (Gastropoda, Conidae). Spixiana, Zeitschrift für Zoologie 8, pp. 165-170.
- 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
- ↑ Baldomero M. Olivera, Jon Seger, Martin P. Horvath, Alexander E. Fedosov: Prey-Capture Strategies of Fish-Hunting Cone Snails: Behavior, Neurobiology and Evolution. In: Brain, behavior and evolution. Volume 86, number 1, September 2015, pp. 58-74, doi : 10.1159 / 000438449 , PMID 26397110 , PMC 4621268 (free full text) (review).