Real spiral staircase
| Real spiral staircase | ||||||||||||
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Housing of Epitonium scalare |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Epitonium scalare | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The real spiral staircase ( Epitonium scalare ) is a spiral staircase snail (Epitoniidae) that is native to the tropical Indo-Pacific .
features
Epitonium scalare is one of the largest representatives of the spiral staircase snails. The right-hand winding, tower-shaped housing , which can be up to 7 cm long, has 8 to 9 strongly rounded whorls that are not connected by a seam, but by the union of the lamellar ribs. The thread is high and has a pointed apex. The surface is smooth between the ribs. The case mouth is egg-shaped.
The thick, black operculum is egg-shaped and has about 4 turns and a depressed core in the back third towards the inner edge.
Occurrence, distribution and way of life
The snail lives below the intertidal zone of sandy or muddy subsoil up to 29 m depth.
It is widespread in the Red Sea , in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar and South Africa and in the southwestern Pacific to Fiji and Japan .
There are no more detailed scientific studies on the way of life of this spiral staircase snail. Spiral stair snails feed parasitically or predatory on sessile cnidarians , from whose tentacles many spiral staircase snails cut pieces and eat them. However, it is reported about the real spiral staircase that it bores its proboscis into the trunk of sea anemones as a parasite and feeds on their body juices by sucking.
use
The Real Spiral Staircase is collected for its housing. The snail used to be considered very rare. In the 19th century, the prices of Epitonium scalare snail shells were so high that, according to a legend, fakes were made from rice paper. However, these forgeries have never been found in recent times.
literature
- Foster James Springsteen, Fely Moreno Leobrera, Carlos Baldon Leobrera: Shells of the Philippines . Carfel Seashell Museum, Manila 1986. p. 74.
- Gert Lindner, Gwynne Vevers: Seashells of the world . Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York 1977. p. 148.
Individual evidence
- ^ Joseph Heller: Sea Snails: A natural history. Springer, London 2015. p. 165.
- ^ Brian Morton, John Morton: The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong 1983. p. 288.
- ^ Pauline Fiene-Severns, Mike Severns, Ruth Dyerly: Tropical seashells . Periplus Editions, Singapore 1998. p. 28.
