Open sea almond
Open sea almond | ||||||||||||
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Open sea almond ( Philine aperta ) |
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Systematics | ||||||||||||
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Scientific name | ||||||||||||
Philine aperta | ||||||||||||
( Linnaeus , 1767) |
The sand slug ( Philine aperta ) is a screw from the family philinidae in the order of the cephalaspidea (Cephalaspidea) extending from polychaetes and mollusks fed. It lives in all three major oceans as well as in the North Sea and Baltic Sea . It is also called the "open bladder snail", which can lead to confusion with the completely different bladder snail .
features
Philine aperta , whose head disk is very wide and whose foot is provided with extensive side margins, becomes up to 3 cm long in the North Sea and up to 10 cm long in South Africa. The snail is translucent milky to yellowish white with opaque white spots. The egg-shaped, colorless, thin-walled and weakly curled snail shell , which in adult snails reaches 9 mm in length and 7 mm in width (in South Africa up to 2 cm in length), has a very wide mouth and is completely covered by the mantle .
distribution
The species is found in the Mediterranean , in the Atlantic on the Canary Islands and on the African coast from South Africa to Norway , in the North Sea and the western Baltic Sea . They can also be found in the Pacific and Indian Ocean , including around Sri Lanka and the Philippines .
habitat
It lives up to a depth of 500 m, mainly in sandy and silty soils, where it digs through the sediment just below the surface .
Life cycle
It is estimated that open sea almonds can live for around 3 to 4 years. The snails are hermaphrodites who mate with one another with their penises . In the North Sea they lay bottle-shaped egg clutches from spring to summer, which can contain up to 50,000 white eggs. After a few days, Veliger larvae hatch , feed on plankton and after several months metamorphose into juvenile snails .
food
The open sea almond feeds on polychaetes as well as small snails and mussels , which are devoured with the proboscis as a whole, along with fresh carrion . Young animals mainly feed on foraminifera . In Red Wharf Bay ( Anglesey ) - apart from a few mussels - combworms of the genus Pectinaria were observed almost exclusively as food, while in Plymouth and Elsinore snails of the genera Polystomella , crack snails (Rissoidae) and the species Turbonilla elegantissima were also prey. In addition, remains of sea urchins and cnidarians have been found in the intestines of Philine aperta .
Enemies
The enemies include haddock and flatfish .
literature
- John D. Fish, Susan Fish: A Student's Guide to the Seashore . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011. 540 pages. Philinidae: Philine aperta (Linnaeus) , p. 239.
- Anne Hurst (1965): Studies on the structure and function of the feeding apparatus of Philine aperta with a comparative consideration of some other opisthobranchs (PDF; 23.0 MB) . Malacologia 2 (3), pp. 281-347.
- Herbert H. Brown (1934): A Study of a Tectibranch Gasteropod Mollusc, Philine aperta (L.) . Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 58 (1), pp. 179-210.
- Henry Augustus Pilsbry (1895): Manual of conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species: Philinidae . Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 1895.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Guido Zsilavecz (2007): Nudibranchs of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay . Southern Underwater Research Group press, Cape Town 2007. ISBN 0-620-38054-3
- ↑ Erwin Stresemann (Ed.): Excursions fauna. Invertebrates I. SH Jaeckel: Mollusca . Volk und Wissen, Berlin 1986. S. 136. Philinidae: Philine aperta (L.).
Web links
- Open sea almond (Philine aperta) , from Brehms Thierleben , on zeno.org
- Underwater world of the Baltic Sea: Open bladder snail - Philine aperta (Linné, 1767)
- Marine Life Information Network: Lobe shell - Philine aperta
- BIOTIC Species Information for Philine aperta
- Marine Species Identification Portal: Philine aperta (Linné, 1767)
- World Register of Marine Species , World Marine Mollusca database: Philine aperta (Linnaeus, 1767)