Charonia tritonis

Charonia tritonis in a closed shell, in Guam, with sea cucumber

The Conch ( Charonia tritonis ) is a snail from the family of Triton snails ( genus Charonia ), which feeds on echinoderms. She lives in subtropical and tropical seas and is one of the greatest living today snails.

Features

The conch is one of the largest recent marine gastropods with a maximum length of 50 centimeters.

The shell of Charonia tritonis, which has a short Siphonalkanal, is the body dealing bulbous, while the thread forming an elongated cone. The Gewindeumgänge are slightly rounded and edged seams frizzy. The smooth surface is provided with flat, blunt ribs. It is white, pied red and brown-red. The spindle is white and wrinkled, the mouth red. The lip edge has black spots with two white teeth. The screw is armdick, yellowish or reddish to white and speckled brown and red.

The operculum of conch is at the top and bottom of dazzling white to beige. The maximum diameter of the largest semi-axis of the discovery of 10 cm it belongs in the heavyweight division and is for these reasons uninteresting for jewelery production.

Dissemination

The Conch Charonia tritonis is widespread in tropical and subtropical areas of the Indo-Pacific. It lives in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean from the coast of East Africa and South Africa, Madagascar and the Persian Gulf to the east, the Pacific Ocean to eastern Polynesia, north to Japan, Midway and Hawaii, south to southern Queensland, Lord Howe Iceland and New Zealand.

The closely related Atlantic Triton snail, Charonia variegata ( Lamarck, 1816), also known as conch and regarded by some biologists as a subspecies Charonia tritonis variegata, on the other hand recognized according WoRMS as a separate species, occurs on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean on including the Caribbean Sea and in the Mediterranean.

Habitat

Charonia tritonis lives in the intertidal zone and below to about 30 meters sea depth on coral reefs.

Life cycle

Like other prosobranch conches are dioecious. The male mated the female with his penis. The female lays the eggs in Located solid oval egg capsules, containing around 3,000 eggs each with a diameter of about 400-430 microns. Females remain after oviposition often close to the eggs. The veliger larvae hatch in about 6-8 weeks, initially have a length of about 770-930 microns and then make a more pelagic phase by month, so that is taken care of for a very wide spread of the worm. Upon metamorphosis of the completed screw, the shell has already more than 5 mm. About the veliger larvae is also little known: So far they have survived in an aquarium no longer than two months, so that an offspring of the worm has not yet succeeded.

Nutrition

Charonia tritonis feed on echinoderms ( Echinodermata ), in particular of starfish. With the acidic saliva of the screw, the prey is paralyzed and softened their calcareous skeleton. The prey is swallowed whole depending on size and consistency or drilled at one point and then blown out.

Among the prey of the conch also includes the highly toxic crown of thorns starfish ( Acanthaster planci ), the risk from its feeding activity of polyp stony corals, many tropical reefs. Charonia tritonis examined with its proboscis the mouth of the starfish and it starts from this point auszufressen under the action of acid saliva. A seizure may take up to a day. By autotomy to Acanthaster can often save at least partially, so that only a portion of the starfish is eaten.

Due to the toxic prey Charonia tritonis takes on a number of toxins that can be dangerous to humans by eating his flesh. This includes tetrodotoxin ( TTX), which originates from certain comb stars ( Astropecten ).

Endangering

Because of the impressive housing conch is collected and is available in many areas from extinction. In Queensland (Australia) it is protected. According to the German Federal Species Protection Ordinance (Appendix 1), the case can not be imported. Based on the worldwide threat it is, however, not included in the Red List.