Marble cone
| Marble cone snail | ||||||||||||
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Conus marmoreus with captured snakehead cowrie snail ( Cypraea caputserpensis ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus marmoreus | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The marble cone , also the marble cone snail ( Conus marmoreus ) is a snail from the family of cone snails (genus Conus ), which is common in the Indo-Pacific . It prefers to feed on snails.
features
Conus marmoreus has a wide, conical snail shell that is 5 to 15 cm long in adult snails. The basic color of the housing is white. The surface of the body is characterized by a black and white pattern with white triangles surrounded by black. The thread is more or less flattened and concave. It has a similar black and white pattern as the body handling. The periostracum is yellowish to orange-brown, thin, translucent and smooth.
The white to light brown top of the foot is speckled with brown and has a black line on the edge. The sole of the foot is white to cream colored and shaded brown with dark brown longitudinal lines. The underside of the rostrum is cream colored with dark yellow transverse lines. Feeler and siphon are white.
The radula teeth, which are connected to a poison gland , have a barb at the tip. They are sawn across the top half of the shaft, ending in a protruding point in the middle of the shaft or behind it. There may sometimes be a second barb opposite the first, but then the front barb is laterally inflated. The waist and spur are absent.
distribution
The marble cone occurs in the Indian Ocean around Chagos and Madagascar , on the coast of India and the Bay of Bengal, and in the western Pacific as far as Fiji and the Marshall Islands .
habitat
Marble cones live in the intertidal zone of coral reefs at depths of 1 to 15 m in areas with sand.
Life cycle
Like all cone snails, Conus marmoreus is sexually separate, and the male mates with his penis . Veliger larvae hatch from the egg capsules , which in turn undergo a metamorphosis into snails. The eggs have a diameter of 390 to 400 µm. From this it is concluded that the pelagic period of the Veliger lasts about 7 to 8 days.
food
Conus marmoreus prey mainly consists of snails , including cone snails . Unlike many other cone snails, the marble cone hunts mainly during the day.
Importance to humans
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The marble cone, like other exotic shells and snails, was often included in the chambers of curiosities of the Renaissance . The frequent depiction on still lifes of this time shows that the species is very widespread and by no means rare. A well-known illustration is an etching by the Dutch painter and graphic artist Rembrandt van Rijn , The Conus Marmoreus shell from 1650.
Due to its patterned housing, Conus marmoreus is still a popular collector's item today, so that humans can be regarded as the main enemy. In the IUCN Red List , the species was listed in 2011 as not endangered (LC - Least Concern) .
Like other cone snails, the marble cone uses its poisonous harpoon not only to catch prey, but also for defense. His poison tooth can inflict painful wounds on people. The poison is deadly to mollusks , but not to humans, nor to small mammals.
Occasionally, the marble cone is eaten by people.
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] marmoreus Linn., P. 7.
- 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
- The Conus Biodiversity website: Conus marmoreus Linnaeus, 1758
- The Cone Snail: Conus marmoreus ( Memento from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Underwater Kwajalein: Conus marmoreus Linnaeus, 1758
- Conus marmoreus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Kohn, A., Raybaudi-Massilia, G., Poppe, G. & Tagaro, S., 2011. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holm Bevers: 29. The Shell (Conus marmoreus) . In: Rembrandt. The Master & his Workshop. Drawings & Etchings . Yale University Press, New Haven, London 1991, ISBN 0-300-05151-4 (English).
- ^ Karin Leonhard: Shell Collecting. On 17th-Century Conchology, Curiosity Cabinets and Still Life Painting . In: Karl AE Enenkel, Paul J. Smith (Eds.): Early Modern Zoology. The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts . tape 1 . Brill, Leiden, Boston 2007, ISBN 978-90-04-13188-0 , pp. 177-216 (English).
- ^ Fischhaus Zepkow: Family Conidae - cone snails
- ↑ Conus marmoreus in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2013. Posted by: A. Kohn, G. Raybaudi-Massilia, G. Poppe, S. Tagaro, 2011. Accessed April 2, 2020.