Tulip cone snail
| Tulip cone snail | ||||||||||||
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Enclosure of Conus tulipa |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Conus tulipa | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The Conus Tulipa ( Conus Tulipa ) is a screw from the family of the cone snails (genus Conus ), which in Indopazifik lives.
features
The circumference of the snail shell of Conus tulipa is egg-shaped to cylindrical and convex, concave towards the head end (tapering in the form of a spindle). In adult snails, the house reaches a length of 5.0 to 9.5 cm. The basic color of the housing is bluish gray, blue or pink. The surface around the body has reddish brown spots, which are often connected to form an interrupted spiral band. It is covered with spirally running rows of brown and black spots and lines. The whorls are red with a brown seam. The thread forms a flat cone that can be slightly concave. The periostracum is yellowish brown, quite thin and can be translucent.
The white top of the foot is densely speckled with brown radial stripes and spots, especially close to the edge. The beige-colored rostrum is sparsely spotted with light brown. The mouth opening is surrounded by a dense ring of appendages. The antennae are white and brown at the tip and mottled brown at the base. The sipho is gray with brown transverse rows of stripes that converge at the base and dark gray at the top. The sole of the foot is white to beige and sparsely spotted brown, with dark vertical stripes.
The rostrum and the mouth opening are extensible in width and length beyond the body length of the snail.
The radula teeth, which are connected to a poison gland , have two opposing barbs at the tip. With 15 to 25 teeth, they are sawn along a third of the shaft from the first barb. At the base of the tooth there is a very weak spur or no spur at all.
distribution
The tulip cone snail occurs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans from the coast of East Africa between Mozambique and Somalia to the Marshall Islands and French Polynesia .
habitat
Tulip cone snails live in the intertidal zone up to a depth of 10 meters, on the coast or in coral reefs on sand, often under rocks, on crushed corals under seaweed or rock surfaces in the surf.
food
Tulip cone snails particularly eat fish , as well as mollusks . Conus tulipa is a prime example of "net hunters" among the cone snails: If the snail encounters suitable prey fish that are resting, it first releases insulin into the water, which apparently causes the fish to suffer a hypoglycemic shock and thus lose their orientation. It then slips its greatly enlarged mouth over one or more fish without having to pierce it beforehand and closes the “false mouth opening” with numerous extensions so that the prey is caught. Only in the mouth are the captured fish stung one after the other with the radula teeth and thus killed by poison.
Importance to humans
Due to its patterned housing, Conus tulipa is a popular collector's item, so that humans can be regarded as a main enemy.
Like other cone snails, the tulip cone uses its poisonous harpoon not only to catch prey, but also for defense. Its fang can penetrate gloves and diving suits. There is no antidote , so treatment is aimed at keeping the person alive until the toxins are gone.
Some toxins ( conotoxins ) from cone snails have a strong analgesic effect and are therefore being investigated for medical applicability. A group of conopeptides (rho-TIA) was found in 2001 in Conus tulipa . This group of conopeptides acts on alpha1 adrenoceptors . Conantokin -T is a toxin obtained from Conus tulipa .
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] tulipa Linn., Pp. 87f.
- 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 tulipa Linnaeus, 1758
- Underwater Kwajalein: Conus tulipa Linnaeus, 1758
- Conus tulipa inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Duda, T., 2011. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helena Safavi-Hemami, Joanna Gajewiak, Santhosh Karanth, Samuel D. Robinson, Beatrix Ueberheide, Adam D. Douglass, Amnon Schlegel, Julita S. Imperial, Maren Watkins, Pradip K. Bandyopadhyay, Mark Yandell, Qing Li, Anthony W. Purcell, Raymond S. Norton, Lars Ellgaard, Baldomero M. Olivera (2015): Specialized insulin is used for chemical warfare by fish-hunting cone snails. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112 (6), pp. 1743-1748.
- ↑ Joachim Czichos: Unusual biological weapon: cone snails catch fish with insulin. The hormone released into the water lowers the blood sugar level of the prey and makes them limp and disoriented. Wissenschaft aktuell, January 20, 2015.
- ↑ Baldomero M. Olivera (1996): Conus Venom Peptides, Receptor and Ion Channel Targets, and Drug Design: 50 Million Years of Neuropharmacology. Published in Molecular Biology of the Cell (November 1, 1997), Volume 8, Issue 11, pp. 2101-2109.
- ↑ Christian Melaun: Phylogenetic and toxinological studies on Conidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) with special consideration of the West Atlantic representatives of the genus Conus (PDF; 4.4 MB). Dissertation, Giessen 2008.
- ↑ See also the video with Conus tulipa, capturing a fish .
- ^ IA Sharpe, J. Gehrmann, ML Loughnan, L. Thomas, DA Adams, A. Atkins, E. Palant, DJ Craik, DJ Adams, PF Alewood, RJ Lewis (2001): Two new classes of conopeptides inhibit the alpha1- adrenoceptor and noradrenaline transporter. Nature Neuroscience 4 (9), pp. 902-907.