Monk cone
| Monk cone | ||||||||||||
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Housing of Conus monachus |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus monachus | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The monk cone or Monk cone shell ( Conus monachus ) is a screw from the family of the cone snails (genus Conus ), which in Indopazifik is widespread and of fish feeds.
features
Conus monachus carries a medium-sized, moderately firm snail shell , which in adult snails reaches 3.5 to 7 cm in length. The circumference of the body is bulbous, conical, the outline alternately convex. The case mouth is wider at the base than at the shoulder. The shoulder is angled, sometimes weak. The thread is low to medium high, its outline straight to slightly concave. The Protoconch has two and a half to three whorls. The first four or five whorls of the teleoconch are covered with weak tubercles. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch are flat to slightly concave with 1 to 2 to 4 to 6 increasing spiral grooves, which are only weakly pronounced in the later circumferences. The area around the body is covered in a quarter to a third at the base with spiraling, sometimes granular ribs that run at quite large intervals.
The basic color of the housing is white and underlaid with various shades of blue-gray to beige. The perimeter of the body has a foggy pattern of greenish-gray to blackish-brown axial flames, clouds and spots that often combine to form a coarse, irregular network. On both sides of the center the axial drawings are more dense and accentuated by an underlaid greenish-beige to dark yellow spiral band, with another, paler band often running below the shoulder. The entire circumference of the body or just the area at the base is covered with spiral rows of brown dots and lines with or without white lines in between. The whorls of the Protoconch are brown. The teleoconch's seam ramps are heavily stained with dark brown radial markings, sometimes with dots at regular intervals on either edge of the ramp. The case mouth is bluish-white.
distribution and habitat
Conus monachus is distributed in the Indo-Pacific from Indonesia to the Philippines and Melanesia . It lives just below the intertidal zone on sand, muddy sand, and mud.
Development cycle
Like all cone snails, Conus monachus is separate sexes and the male mates with the female with his penis . The eggs in the egg capsules develop into Veliger larvae, which initially swim freely as plankton before they sink and metamorphose into crawling snails .
nutrition
Conus monachus eats fish that it harpooned with its poisonous radula teeth .
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] monachus Linn., P. 64.
- Jerry G. Walls: Cone Shells: A Synopsis of the Living Conidae TFH Publications, Neptune (New Jersey) 1979. p. 739.
- 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).