Slot tower snails

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Slot tower snails
Antimelatoma buchanani maorum, New Zealand

Antimelatoma buchanani maorum , New Zealand

Systematics
Superordinate : Caenogastropoda
Order : Sorbeoconcha
Subordination : Hypsogastropoda
Partial order : Neogastropoda
Superfamily : Conoidea
Family : Slot tower snails
Scientific name
Turridae
H. Adams & A. Adams , 1853

The family Turridae , German turrid is a family exclusively marine snails that make their home on the polar oceans to tropical seas. They are almost exclusively predatory forms that kill their prey - poly-bristles , cordworms or injection worms - with poison. Like the cone snails , they belong to the arrow tongues ( Conoidea ).

features

The casings are rolled up in a slim, highly conical shape or, more rarely, in a low spiral. The smallest species measures around 2 mm in adulthood, the largest species grows to over 12 cm high. There are usually many turns. A small indentation in the upper part of the outer lip of the mouth is very characteristic. The ornamentation and the coloring are extraordinarily diverse. The mouth is usually long and narrow. The lower end is drawn out into a long siphon channel. The mouth of some species can still be closed by an operculum in the adult stage .

Occurrence and distribution

The representatives of the Turridae occur from shallow water to abyssal depths. They are common from the polar seas to the tropical seas.

Way of life

development

Slotted tower snails, like most front gill snails, are sexually separate. The eggs are deposited in egg capsules that do not contain any eggs. The development of the Trochophora larva takes place in the egg capsule for a few weeks, the hatched Veliger larva lives in the zooplankton before it undergoes the metamorphosis into juvenile snails.

food

Slitter snails are predatory and have a poison gland. The prey is paralyzed and killed with the fangs of the radula . In some species, the poison teeth are detached from the radula and used like a harpoon (similar to the cone snails ). Probably almost all species of Turridae exclusively or largely of Vielborstern (polychaete), but so far the prey spectrum has been studied only in a small number of turrid. Of the 19 species that were formerly part of this family and were studied up to 1990, eight are each specialized in one type of polychaete, three species eat a limited number of different polychaetes, five species act as generalists and eat different polychaetes, one species eats polychaetes and Cordworms and two species eat sprayworms . Among the snails that still belong to this family, Lophiotoma leucotropis should be mentioned, which eats many- bristles of the genera Poecilochaetus and Marphysa . Also Turris babylonia is reported that it feeds on Vielborstern. There are no studies on the prey spectrum for these and some other very common slug tower snail species - such as Unedogemmula indica . Feeding experiments with two species of the genus Gemmula - Gemmula diomedea and Gemmula speciosa - indicate that the representatives of this genus specialize in polychaetes of the family Terebellidae . Lophiotoma acuta also preyed on offered terebellids, but in contrast to the two other snail species ate several prey. Unedogemmula bisaya , on the other hand, left the offered terebellids untouched.

Important enemies of the slugs are crabs .

Systematics

The Turridae family is also referred to as tower snails in popular scientific literature. However, this name is mainly used for the Turritellidae family , so it is not applicable to that family.

With more than 4000 species, the Turridae were considered by Powell (1966) in the 20th century as the most species-rich family of molluscs . By the end of the last century, however, some groups were relocated, such as the Drilliidae , which are now regarded as an independent family. In 2005, the Turridae family was divided into five subfamilies by Bouchet and Rocroi. In 2011, however, based on molecular genetic studies, most of these were placed in other groups or raised to separate families.

Compilation of the subfamilies of Bouchet and Rocroi from 2005:

  • Turridae Adams & Adams, 1853.
    • Turrinae Adams & Adams, 1853. This subfamily includes the Turridae in the narrower sense, which have remained within the family of slug snails with 16 genera since 2011.
    • Cochlespirinae Powell, 1942. This subfamily was raised to the family Cochlespiridae in 2011
    • Crassispirinae McLean, 1971. This group was raised to the family under the name Pseudomelatomidae .
    • Zemaciinae Sysoev, 2003. This subfamily with the only genus Zemacies differed from most of the other related slugs in the lack of a radula . Another genus within the superfamily Conoidea without radula is Horaiclavus from the family Horaiclavidae . The genus Zemacies was transferred to the Borsoniidae family in 2011 and the subfamily was abandoned.
    • Zonulispirinae McLean, 1971. The genus Zonulispira was placed in the family Pseudomelatomidae and the subfamily is currently no longer valid.

Genera

The following recent and fossil genera are distinguished within this family.

As of March 15, 2015

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Turridae [from * turri-], the slug tower snails. In: Lexicon of Biology . Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Freiburg 2004.
  2. ↑ a b c R. L. Shimek: The Biology of the Northeastern Pacific Turridae. In: Journal of Molluscan Studies. 49, 1982, 2, pp. 146-163.
  3. ↑ John A. Miller: The feeding and prey capture mechanism of Turricula nelliae spurius (Hedley) (Gastropoda: Turridae). In: Brian Morton (Ed.): The Marine Flora and Fauna of Hong Kong and Southern China II: Behavior, morphology, physiology and pollution. Hong Kong University Press, 1990, p. 979.
  4. ↑ Ashley Chadwick, Jason S. Biggs: Turris babylonia Linnaeus, 1758 - Tower of Babel ( Memento of August 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). The Cone Snail - Exploring Cone Snails and Science, 2010.
  5. ↑ Francisco M. Heralde III, Yuri I. Kantor, Mary Anne Q. Astilla, Arturo O. Lluisma, Rollan Geronimo, Porfirio M. Aliño, Maren Watkins, Patrice Showers Corneli, Baldomero M. Olivera, Ameurfina D. Santos, Gisela P Concepción (2010): The Indo-Pacific Gemmula species in the subfamily Turrinae: Aspects of field distribution, molecular phylogeny, radular anatomy and feeding ecology. Philippine Science Letters, vol. 3 (1), 21-34.
  6. ↑ Des Beechey (2003): Family Turridae. Turrids.
  7. ↑ AWB Powell: The molluscan families Speightiidae and Turridae an evaluation of the valid taxa, both Recent and fossil, with lists of characteristic species. In: Bulletin of the Aukland Institute and Museum. 5, 1966, pp. 1-184.
  8. ^ Philippe Bouchet: Inventorying the molluscan diversity of the world: what is our rate of progress? In: The Veliger. 40, 1997, pp. 1-11.
  9. ^ A b Philippe Bouchet, Jean-Pierre Rocroi (Ed.): Classification and nomenclator of gastropod families. Part 2: Working classification of the Gastropoda . (= Malacologia. 47). Ann Arbor 2005, ISBN 3-925919-72-4 , pp. 239-283.
  10. ↑ a b c d e P. Bouchet, YI Kantor, A. Sysoev, N. Puillandre: A new operational classification of the Conoidea. In: Journal of Molluscan Studies. 77, 2011, pp. 273-308. (on-line)
  11. ^ A b Philippe Bouchet: Turridae H. Adams & A. Adams, 1853 (1838) . In: WoRMS, World Register of Marine Species. 2014, accessed March 16, 2015

literature

  • Philippe Bouchet, Jean-Pierre Rocroi: Classification and nomenclator of gastropod families. Part 2: Working classification of the Gastropoda . (= Malacologia. 47). Ann Arbor 2005 ISSN  0076-2997 , pp. 239-283.
  • Victor Millard: Classification of the Mollusca. A Classification of World Wide Mollusca . Rhine Road, South Africa 1997, ISBN 0-620-21261-6 .
  • Frank Riedel: Origin and evolution of the "higher" Caenogastropoda . (= Berlin Geoscientific Treatises, Series E, Volume 32). Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89582-077-6 .
  • R. Tucker Abbott, S. Peter Dance: Compendium of Seashells. Odyssey Publishing, El Cajon, California, ISBN 0-9661720-0-0 .

Web links

Commons : Turridae  - Collection of images, videos and audio files