Shiny moon snail
| Shiny moon snail | ||||||||||||
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Housing made by Euspira pulchella |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Euspira pulchella | ||||||||||||
| Risso , 1826 |
The euspira nitida or Shiny umbilical screw ( Euspira pulchella ) is a screw from the family of the moon screw extending from molluscs fed. It lives in the North Sea , the northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean .
features
The round oval snail shell of Euspira pulchella , which in adult snails with 5 to 7 convex passages reaches up to 1.8 cm in height and 1.4 mm in width, has a slightly raised thread with stepped passages and a very wide housing mouth that makes up two thirds the total height. The navel is partially covered by a callus and has a narrow, pointed opening. The surface is smooth and shiny, the base color leather to horn-colored, pale at the base and the columella. On the perimeter of the body there are 4 to 5 spiral rows of elongated or arrow-shaped red-brown spots.
The animal is yellowish to cream-colored. The snail's head has a short, wide snout and two long, rather flat antennae. In the active animal, the large foot covers the head and part of the housing. The propodium is used to plow through the sandy subsoil.
distribution
The glossy moon snail occurs in the north-eastern Atlantic , in the North Sea to Norway and in the Mediterranean . There are also deposits in the Baltic Sea .
habitat
Euspira pulchella lives on sand and gravel, usually below the intertidal zone at depths of 10 to 50 meters, rarely above the low water line. But there are also individual finds from a depth of 2000 meters. The snail usually burrows in the sand. The empty snail shells are often washed up on the beach where the live animals cannot go.
Life cycle
Like other moon snails, Euspira pulchella is segregated. The male mates with the female with his large triangular penis at the right antennae . The females lay their egg capsules in the collar-shaped clusters formed from jelly and sand, which are typical for moon snails and have a diameter of about 3 cm. A capsule measures around 200 to 250 μm and contains one egg. The eggs hatch pelagic living veliger larvae that have .mu.m a shell length of about 200 at 20 ° C for about 9 to 10 days after oviposition, at 14 ° C after about 14 to 15 days. The Veligers stay below the surface of the water under experimental conditions and begin to eat plankton within the first hour after hatching . At 20 ° C, the larvae need about 45 days to metamorphose . In the first 25 days, its velum widens and then divides into four arms with red coloring at the tips. By the 40th day, the foot grows and black pigmentation forms. Contact with the natural substrate triggers metamorphosis. The juvenile snails begin to eat within three days of metamorphosis. In the experiment, about 2 mm long clams Lasaea adansoni and later 4 mm large Cerastoderma edule were pierced and eaten by these young animals . In addition, cannibalism has been observed among the juvenile snails.
nutrition
Like other moon snails feed on Euspira pulchella of clams and snails that are sought by digging his foot in the sand. The prey is grasped with the foot and a hole is drilled in the shell with the radula .
Systematics
Joseph Antoine Risso described the species under the name Natica pulchella in 1826 . Further synonyms include Natica nitida Donovan , 1804, Natica nitidia auct. non Donovan, 1800, Natica alderi Forbes , 1838, Lunatia pulchella (Risso, 1826), Lunatia alderi (Forbes, 1838), Lunatia nitida (Donovan, 1804), Euspira nitida (Donovan, 1804), Natica poliana alderi (Forbes, 1838 ), Polinices pulchellus (Risso, 1826) and Polinices pulchella (Risso, 1826).
literature
- Betty Jean Piech: Naticidae and Personidae: A Classification of Recent Species . Delaware Museum of Natural History, Wilmington, DE 1998, 60 pp.
- Frank Riedel: Origin and evolution of the "higher" Caenogastropoda . Berliner Geoscientific Abhandlungen, Series E, Volume 32, Berlin 2000, 240 pages, ISBN 3-89582-077-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erwin Stresemann (Ed.): Excursions fauna. Invertebrates I. SH Jaeckel: Mollusca . Volk und Wissen, Berlin 1986. S. 132. Naticidae - umbilical snails: Natica Scopoli, N. poliana alderi (Forbes) [ N. nitida (Donovan)].
- ↑ a b World Register of Marine Species , World Marine Mollusca database: Euspira pulchella (Risso, 1826)
- ↑ Vollrath Wiese: Preliminary list of species of mollusks in the Baltic Sea . House of Nature - Cismar (Malacological Museum)
- ↑ Peter R. Kingsley-Smith, Christopher A. Richardson, Raymond Seed (2005): Growth and development of the veliger larvae and juveniles of Polinices pulchellus (Gastropoda: Naticidae) . Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, vol. 85 (1), February 2005, pp. 171-174.
