Olive snails

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Olive snails
Black olive snail (Oliva vidua)

Black olive snail ( Oliva vidua )

Systematics
Superordinate : Caenogastropoda
Order : Sorbeoconcha
Subordination : Hypsogastropoda
Partial order : New snails (Neogastropoda)
Superfamily : Olivoidea
Family : Olive snails
Scientific name
Olividae
Latreille , 1825

The olive snails (Olividae) are a species-rich family of exclusively marine, predatory snails . They live mainly in the warmer seas. The oldest representatives of this family are documented for the Upper Cretaceous .

features

The shells of the olive snails are, as the name implies, olive-shaped to rounded and highly conical. The surface is slightly ornamented, usually shiny like porcelain and often provided with a color pattern. The adult size of the housing is around 0.7 to 12 cm. The foot is usually very large, the propodium is pulled out in two lobes, two more lobes are attached to the side of the foot. With the propodial and lateral lobes of the foot, the animal can almost completely envelop itself and move quickly in the loose sediment or just below the sediment surface. The rasp tongue is relatively short with three elements per transverse row. The animals are of separate sex. The egg capsules are attached to the hard substrate or simply placed on the soft substrate. They contain around 150 to 200 eggs. The ontogenetic development can take place via a plankton-eating Veliger larva, but it can also be direct, i.e. H. The finished young animal hatches directly from the egg white-rich egg capsule.

Way of life

The olive snails can be found in all of today's seas. However, the focus of the distribution with the greatest diversity is clearly in the warmer seas. Almost without exception, they are soft-bottomed inhabitants (primarily sandy soils). Here they mostly live in the sediment, which they can literally plow through with the help of their large foot. The Sipho is held over the sediment surface to breathe and also allows prey to be localized. All olive snails are predators. Sometimes attack very large prey. The prey consists primarily of bristle worms and other molluscs , which are overwhelmed with the help of the large foot. The muscular foot with the large propodium allows some species to jump up from the sediment surface and swim a short distance. The great majority of the species live in shallower water. A few species have also migrated into the deep sea, where they have been found up to 4400 m.

Systematics

According to Bouchet & Rocroi (2005), the family is divided into three subfamilies:

Some authors also have a subfamily Agaroninae Olsson, eliminated in 1956, which Bouchet & Rocroi list as a synonym of the subfamily Olivinae. The subfamilies dwarf olive snails (Olivellinae) and mock olive snails (Pseudolivinae), which were placed in the Olividae family in older publications, are now run as separate families. The family Olividae is still counted by Ponder & Lindberg (1997) to the superfamily Muricoidea. Bouchet & Rocroi (2005) already run them as their own superfamily with the families Olividae and Olivellidae Troschel, 1869. The pseudolividae, on the other hand, together with the Ptychatractidae form the superfamily Pseudolivoidea .

literature

Web links

Commons : Olividae  - collection of images, videos and audio files