Spot cones
| Spot cones | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Housing from Conus varius |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus varius | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The spotted cone or the spotted cone snail ( Conus varius ) is a snail from the family of cone snails (genus Conus ), which is widespread in the Indo-Pacific .
features
Conus varius bears a medium-sized to moderately large, moderately firm to firm snail shell , which reaches 3.5 to 6 cm in length in adult snails. The body circumference is conical to conical cylindrical, in the Pacific sometimes slightly ovoid, the outline almost straight to slightly convex. The shoulder is angled or almost angled and moderately to severely covered with tubercles. The thread is medium high, its outline is slightly concave to slightly convex. The Protoconch has 4 or more whorls and measures a maximum of 0.85 mm. The first whorls of the Teleoconch are covered with tubercles. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch are flat to slightly concave with 1 to 6 increasing spiral grooves that become finer or fade in the later passages. Some animals have housings with heavily grained ribs evenly spaced around the entire body, others only slightly grained ribs at large intervals and only in a quarter of the body around the base.
The basic color of the housing is white. The area around the body is often slightly pale pink or purple in color with dark brown, irregularly shaped or axially aligned spots in the third towards the shoulder and the third towards the base. The spots vary in size and number and can also unite to form two spirally running bands. Dense spiral rows of dark brown lines and dots extend from the base to the shoulder. The whorls of the Protoconch are white. The Teleoconch's sewing ramps have sparse brown spots. The inside of the case mouth is almost white or pale yellow to pale orange behind a white edge zone.
The thin, translucent, almost smooth periostracum is yellowish-brown.
The top of the foot is white to pale yellow, often with a black or dark brown dotted line in front of the edge. The front portion of the foot has brown or black markings on the side and center, and there is a small black spot below the operculum . The sole of the foot is white to yellow, the rostrum yellow. The antennae are yellow with a dark yellow to brown tip. The siphon is pale yellow with a light brown to black ring a little below the tip, which can also be replaced laterally by a sparse stain and sometimes a somewhat darker distal end.
The radula teeth connected to a poison gland have a barb on the tip and a second barb or cutting edge on the opposite side. They have a saw that ends in a point. The shaft has a waist and a small spur sits at the base.
distribution and habitat
Conus varius is distributed in the Indo-Pacific from the coast of East Africa and KwaZulu-Natal via Aldabra and the Mascarene Islands to the Marshall Islands , Tuamotu , Fiji and Australia ( Northern Territory , Queensland ), but is absent in the Red Sea and on the coasts of India and Sri Lankas. It lives in the intertidal zone and down to a depth of about 30 m, in the Philippines sometimes up to 240 m in coral reefs on subsoils with sand, often under coral rocks.
Development cycle
Like all cone snails, Conus varius is separate sexes, and the male mates with the female with his penis . The female lays capsules about 8 to 11 mm long and 6 to 8 mm wide in parallel rows on basal plates on the underside of rocks. A capsule contains around 1,700 to 2,700 eggs, a whole clutch contains 63,000 to 81,000 eggs. The eggs in it are around 160 to 166 µm in size, from which it is concluded that the Veliger larvae swim freely for at least 26 to 27 days before they sink down and metamorphose into crawling snails .
nutrition
There are no direct observations of the feeding behavior and prey of Conus varius . His fangs are similar to those of Conus virgo and other representatives of the subgenus Virgiconus , which it is inferred that, like this polychaete captured (Polychaeta).
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] varius Linn., P. 25.
- 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).
