Mosaic cone
| Mosaic cone | ||||||||||||
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Housing of Conus tessulatus |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus tessulatus | ||||||||||||
| Born , 1778 |
The mosaic cone or mosaic cone shell ( Conus tessulatus ) is a screw from the family of the cone snails (genus Conus ), which in Indopazifik is widespread and both of Vielborstern as small fish feeds.
features
Conus tessulatus carries a medium-sized, moderately firm to moderately heavy snail shell , which reaches 3 to 8 cm in length in adult snails. The circumference of the body is conical to broadly conical, sometimes bulbous or broadly bulbous, the outline below the shoulder is convex, straight towards the base. The shoulder is slightly to clearly angled. The thread is low to medium high and its outline is concave. The multi-threaded protoconch has a maximum diameter of 0.7 mm. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch have 1 to 2 to 4 increasing spiral grooves, often two larger grooves and additional spiral strips. The third of the body around the base is covered with weak or incised, often dotted, spirally spaced grooves.
The basic color of the housing is white. The circumference of the body has spiral rows of orange to reddish-brown rectangular spots or bars, which often alternate with white markings. On both sides of the center dark markings unite to form spiral bands. The base is light purple. The whorls of the Protoconch are gray to light orange. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch have radial markings that correspond in size and color to the bars on the perimeter of the body. The case mouth is white and often highlighted with purple or pink.
The thin, velvety, alternately translucent periostracum is orange or olive brown with very fine, intertwined axial ribs. In almost adults the periostracum is very thin and almost colorless, in large adults it is moderately thick and fibrous.
The foot is white to brown with an alternating light brown spotted upper side, in the front section with black or brown dots and spots that form a triangular pattern, sometimes with a brown line in front of the edge and a yellow front edge. The soles of the feet are often striped brown or meshed. The rostrum is uniformly cream-colored or ventrally ventrally and dorsally dark yellow with a cream-colored to orange-colored front edge. The antennae are white with individual black spots, their tips sometimes yellow. The sipho is white, turns into cream color towards the rear and is sometimes also spotted brown with a broad, sometimes interrupted black ring in the front section, the distal edge white or yellow.
The radula teeth connected to a poison gland have a barb on the tip and a cutting edge on the opposite side. They are sawn and have a spur at the base.
distribution and habitat
Conus tessulatus is distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific from the coast of East Africa across the Indian Ocean , Indonesia and the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of Central America from Mexico to Costa Rica and Australia ( Northern Territory , Queensland , Western Australia ). It lives in the intertidal zone and below in sea depths of up to about 40 m, around the Philippines up to about 240 m and western Mexico to 15 to 72 m on coral reefs and in bays on fine to coarse sand with or without vegetation, muddy sand and scree in protected areas .
Development cycle
Like all cone snails, Conus tessulatus is sexually separate and the male mates with the female with his penis . In the Persian Gulf , the female lays about 25 to 26 mm long and 18 to 21 mm wide capsules in parallel rows on rocks, empty mussel shells or abandoned living tubes of polystyrene . One egg capsule contains around 200 to 300 eggs with a diameter of around 250 µm, from which it is concluded that the Veliger larvae swim freely for at least 19 days before they sink down and metamorphose into crawling snails .
nutrition
Conus tessulatus eats primarily polychaete (Polychaeta), which he shares with his poisonous Radulazähnen harpooned, but it also happens that he devours bristle worms without having stabbed before. It also preyes on small fish . Obviously, it cannot pierce the thicker skin of stronger fish. In several animals were both bristles of annelids and fish bones found. A δ-conotoxin from Conus tessulatus , which delays the closure of sodium channels in vertebrates, is similar to the conotoxins of several fish-eating cone snails.
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] tessellatus Linn., P. 11.
- Jerry G. Walls: Cone Shells: A Synopsis of the Living Conidae TFH Publications, Neptune (New Jersey) 1979. p. 898.
- 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 tessulatus Born, 1778
- Underwater Kwajalein: Conus tessulatus Linnaeus, 1758
- Conus tessulatus engulfing its worm prey.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Baldomero M. Olivera, Jon Seger, Martin P. Horvath, Alexander Fedosov (2015): Prey-capture Strategies of Fish-hunting Cone Snails: Behavior, Neurobiology and Evolution. Brain, Behavior and Evolution 86 (1), pp. 58-74. PMC 4621268 (free full text)
- ↑ a b Joseph W. Aman, Julita S. Imperial, Beatrix Ueberheide, Min-Min Zhang, Manuel Aguilar, Dylan Taylor, Maren Watkins, Doju Yoshikami, Patrice Showers-Corneli, Helena Safavi-Hemami, Jason Biggs, Russell W. Teichert , and Baldomero M. Olivera (2015): Insights into the origins of fish hunting in venomous cone snails from studies of Conus tessulatus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112 (16), 5087-5092.