Turned cone snail
| Turned cone snail | ||||||||||||
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Housing of Conus radiatus |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus radiatus | ||||||||||||
| Gmelin , 1791 |
The Turned cone shell ( Conus radiatus ) is a screw from the family of the cone snails (genus Conus ), which in Indopazifik is widespread. It belongs to the subgenus Phasmoconus , a group of fish-eating cone snails, and has a poison, contryphan , which has a strong effect on vertebrates .
features
Conus radiatus carries a small to large, moderately firm to firm snail shell , which in adult snails reaches 3 to 11 cm in length. The circumference of the body is narrow, cone-like cylindrical, cone-like cylindrical or bulbous conical, the contour in the third at the apex is convex and otherwise almost straight. The shoulder is almost angled or rounded. The thread is low, its outline concave to straight. The Protoconch is multi-threaded and has a maximum diameter of about 0.7 mm. The seam ramps of the Teleoconch are flat to slightly concave with a distinct rib under the seam and 1 to 6 to 8 increasing spiral grooves, on the last seam ramp with additional spiral stripes. The circumference of the body has in the third to the half at the base at alternating intervals spiraling and axially striped, broad grooves, next to which broad ligaments and ribs run towards the apex and narrow ligaments and ribs towards the base.
The circumference of the body is beige to dark brown, sometimes shaded with pale purple, often with a narrow, white or gray spiral band on the shoulder, more rarely with irregularly arranged white to bluish-white axial stripes. The Protoconch is beige, the seams of the whorls of the Teleoconch white or gray to dark brown, occasionally shaded with purple, often two-tone or spotted dark and light. The color of the thread can contrast with the color of the body circumference. The inside of the case mouth is white, sometimes colored with brown or purple.
The thin, opaque, smooth periostracum is dark brown.
The top of the foot is white to beige with dark yellow and brown spots except for the center of the front section, with a black dotted line in front of the edge ending at the front corners and a dark yellow spot below the operculum . The sole of the foot combines white and dark yellow. The rostrum is cream colored, with the exception of the tip with dark brown spots. The antennae are white with a dark yellow tip. The ventral side of the siphon is monochrome white and goes dorsolaterally into dark yellow with black transverse spots.
distribution and habitat
Conus radiatus occurs in the western Pacific Ocean from Taiwan to the Philippines , Papua New Guinea , Solomon Islands and Fiji . It lives in sea depths of 10 to 30 m on mud and muddy sand.
food
Conus radiatus is referred to as a fish- hunting snail, although no descriptions of prey catching and eating have been published so far. Contryphan, which is contained in the poison mixture and comes from the poison gland , is highly toxic to both fish and mammals and triggers the “stiff tail syndrome” in mice. From the shape of the fangs it can be concluded that the snail does not harpoon, but only stabs. This is documented in the case of Conus flavus , which follows the fatally struck, very quickly dying fish and eats it. Such feeding behavior is also suspected for other species of the subgenus Phasmoconus , including Conus radiatus .
literature
- Foster James Springsteen, Fely Moreno Leobrera, Carlos Baldon Leobrera: Shells of the Philippines. Carfel Seashell Museum, Manila 1986. Conus radiatus Gmelin, 1791. p. 229, plate 64.
- 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
- ↑ Elsie C. Jimenez, M. Baldomero Olivera, William R. Gray, Lourdes J. Cruz (1996): Contryphan is a D-tryptophan-containing peptide Conus. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 271 (45), pp. 28002-5.
- ↑ H. Steve White, R. Tyler McCabe, Heather Armstrong, Sean D. Donevan, Lourdes J. Cruz, Fe C. Abogadie, Josep Torres, Jean E. Rivier, Ingo Paarmann, Michael Hollmann and Baldomero M. Olivera (2000) : In vitro and in vivo characterization of conantokin-R, a selective NMDA receptor antagonist isolated from the venom of the fish-hunting snail Conus radiatus. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 292 (1), pp. 425-432.
- ↑ 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).