Nut satella cone
| Nut satella cone | ||||||||||||
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Housing of Conus nussatella |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus nussatella | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The Nussatella cone or the Nussatella cone snail ( Conus nussatella ) is a snail from the family of cone snails (genus Conus ), which is common in the Indo-Pacific and eats small snails.
features
Conus nussatella bears a medium-sized to large, moderately firm snail shell , which in adult snails reaches 4 to 9.5 cm in length. The periphery of the body is usually narrow and cylindrical, the outline straight with almost parallel sides in the two thirds of the shoulder, convex to straight towards the base. The case mouth is wider at the base than at the shoulder. The shoulder is almost angled or indistinct. The thread is medium high, its outline is slightly convex to dome-shaped. The Protoconch has about 3 whorls and measures a maximum of 0.65 mm. The first 6 to 7 whorls of the teleoconch have tubercles. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch are almost flat with 1 to 4 to 10 increasing spiral grooves. The circumference of the body is covered from the base to the shoulder with fine to strong, often grainy, spirally running ribs, between which spirally striped grooves run, sometimes with a grainy spiral thread.
The basic color of the housing is white. The circumference of the body has spiral rows of small orange to dark brown spots and alternating orange, brown or purple axial stripes and spots that sometimes merge axially as well as spirally. The whorls of the Protoconch are white. The seam ramps of the first whorls of the Teleoconch are spotted orange to dark brown, the outer edges with brown spots.
The thin, almost opaque, smooth to rough periostracum is yellow to brown.
The snail itself is pale yellow to lemon yellow in the Indian Ocean . The rostrum has a black tip. The sipho is yellow-brown, dorsolaterally with brown transverse lines, black at the top and below. In Papua New Guinea , the foot is white to yellowish-beige, the top of the foot is spotted dark yellow to brown, but less so in the middle part. The rostrum and antennae are white to pale gray. The sipho is brown at the base and has white, brown, gray and black transverse bands in the distal section up to the tip. The operculum is yellow and tiny in the Red Sea , but quite long in Hansa Bay in Papua New Guinea.
The radula teeth, which are connected to a poison gland , are strong and have a barb on the tip and a cutting edge on the opposite side. They are sawn on the inside, ending in a protruding point next to the middle waist. A strong spur sits at the base.
distribution and habitat
Conus nussatella is widespread in the Red Sea and throughout the Indo-Pacific , including off Australia ( Northern Territory , Queensland , Western Australia ). It lives in the intertidal zone and below it to a depth of about 25 m on surfaces with sand and in caves between living corals.
nutrition
Conus nussatella has fangs to those of cone snails like Conus imperialis are very similar, the fire bristle worms and other polychaete eat. So it can be expected that Conus nussatella will also eat annelid worms. Alfred R. Calabrese observed in 1971 that Conus nussatella was eating small snails : on the beach in Hawaii (Mākaha), he found a Conus nussatella while eating a hoof snail Hipponix conicus and later successfully fed two Drupa granulata and a Conus retifer to the Conus nussatella .
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] nussatella Linn., P. 80.
- 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
- The Conus Biodiversity Website: Conus nussatella Linnaeus, 1758
- Underwater Kwajalein: Conus nussatella Linnaeus, 1758
Individual evidence
- ^ AJ Peile (1939): Radula notes, VIII. Conus. Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London 23, pp. 348-355.
- ^ Alfred R. Calabrese (1971): Feeding observations of Conus nussatella (Linnaeus, 1757). Hawaiian Shell News 19 (1), p. 1.