Coofs
| Coofs | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
_(San_Salvador_Island,_Bahamas)_2_(16003468958).jpg)
Shell of the white coofelk ( Hipponix antiquatus ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Hipponicidae | ||||||||||||
| Troschel , 1861 |
The hoofed shells (Hipponicidae) are a family from the Caenogastropoda group that are found in warmer and warm seas of all three major oceans. They live as detritus feeders or feed as filter feeders of plankton .
features
The exclusively marine horseshoe snails have a cap-shaped to hoof-shaped housing with a conspicuous, funnel-shaped to horseshoe-shaped limestone plate for the attachment of the muscles. With a shell diameter of usually less than 3 cm, they are small snails. The animals have no operculum. The base of the snail has a large, disc-shaped section, which in many species forms a limestone plate. The hoof snails sit on this and stop moving and mostly eat detritus , which they collect from the substrate surface with their powerful proboscis . Some species specialize in the feces of other mollusks. Other coofs feed as filter feeders .
The genera Hipponix and Cheilea can be found in tropical and subtropical seas around the world.
Coofs are protandric hermaphrodites that incubate their eggs in egg capsules on the mother.
Genera
The following 9 genera belong to the family Hipponicidae:
- Antisabia Wenz, 1940
- Cheilea Modeer, 1793
- Eoatlanta Cossmann, 1889 †
- Hipponix Defrance, 1819
- Leptonotis Conrad, 1866
- Malluvium Melvill, 1906
- Milicheilea Espinosa & Ortea, 2011
- Pilosabia Iredale, 1929
- Sabia Gray, 1840
literature
- Frank Riedel: Origin and evolution of the "higher" Caenogastropoda . Berliner Geoscientific Abhandlungen, Series E, Volume 32, Berlin 2000, p. 43. ISBN 3-89582-077-6 .
- John Wesley Tunnell: Encyclopedia of Texas Seashells: Identification, Ecology, Distribution, and History. Texas A&M University Press, College Station (Texas) 2010. p. 169.
- R. Tucker Abbott, Percy A. Morris: A Field Guide to Shells: Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and the West Indies. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston 2001, p. 177.
- Philippe Bouchet, Jean-Pierre Rocroi: Part 2. Working classification of the Gastropoda . Malacologia 47, Ann Arbor 2005, pp. 239-283, ISSN 0076-2997
Web links
- Family Hipponicidae - Coofs - Fischhaus Zepkow
- Coofs . In: Lexicon of Biology , online edition, 1999.