The Bursidae,

common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often contrast ...

"frog snails" or "frog shells", are a rather small taxonomic

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

of large

sea snail Sea snail is a common name for slow-moving marine gastropod molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguished from snails primarily by the a ...

marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military ...

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

predatory

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class ...

s in the clade Littorinimorpha. MolluscaBase eds. (2020). MolluscaBase. Bursidae Thiele, 1925. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=22995 on 2020-08-19

Distribution

Most species in this family occur on rocks or coral reefs in shallow waters of tropical oceans, including the

Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

, the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexic ...

, and other marginal warm seas, but they are also found in the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

and the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

. Only a few are found on sandy bottoms of deeper waters of the continental shelf.

Shell description

The thick, ovate to slightly elongated shells are coarsely sculptured, resembling the triton shells of the Ranellidae. The intersection of the spiral ribs and the axial sculpture results in a strong nodulose pattern of more or less round knobs. This warty surface gave them their common name - frog shells. The outer varicose lip is dilated and shows a number of labial plicae, resulting in a toothed lip on the inside. The inner lip is calloused, showing transverse plicae. The anterior and posterior canals are well developed. The

siphonal canal The siphonal canal is an anatomical feature of the shells of certain groups of sea snails within the clade Neogastropoda. Some sea marine gastropods have a soft tubular anterior extension of the mantle called a siphon through which water is d ...

at the anterior end is usually short. The anal canal at the posterior end is a deep slot. The strong axial varices are often in two continuous series per whorl, one down each side of the shell. The nucleus of the corneous operculum is situated either at the anterior end or the mid-inner margin. A

periostracum The periostracum ( ) is a thin, organic coating (or "skin") that is the outermost layer of the shell of many shelled animals, including molluscs and brachiopods. Among molluscs, it is primarily seen in snails and clams, i.e. in gastropods ...

(hairy covering of the outer shell) is usually absent or thin.

Anatomy

The taenioglossate

radula The radula (, ; plural radulae or radulas) is an anatomical structure used by molluscs for feeding, sometimes compared to a tongue. It is a minutely toothed, chitinous ribbon, which is typically used for scraping or cutting food before the food ...

has seven teeth in each row: one central tooth, flanked on each side by one lateral and two marginal teeth. The central tooth is saddle-shaped, with long basal limbs, each bearing a cusp-like spur upon its face. Their eyes are based at the base of their filiform

tentacle In zoology, a tentacle is a flexible, mobile, and elongated organ present in some species of animals, most of them invertebrates. In animal anatomy, tentacles usually occur in one or more pairs. Anatomically, the tentacles of animals work main ...

s. The foot is short and thick. Fertilization is internal. The female snail lays her eggs enclosed in a jelly-like matrix that she sometimes broods with her foot. After hatching, the eggs become free-swimming larvae.

Feeding habits

Frog shells are active

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill t ...

s, and appear to feed on bristle worms (

Polychaeta Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class of generally marine annelid worms, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are ...

) that they anaesthetize with acidic saliva through their extensible, distally flattened probosces.

Genera

Genera in the family Bursidae include: Aquitanobursa tuberosa 001

* †'' Aquitanobursa'' M. T. Sanders, Merle & Puillandre, 2019 * '' Aspa'' H. Adams & A. Adams, 1853 * '' Bufonaria'' Schumacher, 1817 * ''

Bursa ( grc-gre, Προῦσα, Proûsa, Latin: Prusa, ota, بورسه, Arabic:بورصة) is a city in northwestern Turkey and the administrative center of Bursa Province. The fourth-most populous city in Turkey and second-most populous in the ...

'' Roding, 1798 * '' Bursina'' Oyama 1964 - assigned to Bursidae by Beu in 2005 * '' Crossata'' Jousseaume, 1881 * '' Marsupina'' Dall, 1904 * † '' Ranellina'' - assigned to Bursidae by Palmer and Brann in 1966 * '' Tutufa'' Jousseaume, 1881 ;Genera brought into synonymy: * ''Annaperenna'' Iredale, 1936: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Bechtelia'' Emerson & Hertlein, 1964 †: synonym of ''Marsupina'' Dall, 1904 * ''Buffo'' Montfort, 1810: synonym of ''Marsupina'' Dall, 1904 * ''Bufonariella'' Thiele, 1929: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Chasmotheca'' Dall, 1904: synonym of ''Bufonaria'' Schumacher, 1817 * ''Colubrellina'' Fischer, 1884: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Dulcerana'' Oyama, 1964: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Lampadopsis'' P. Fischer, 1884: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Lampas'' Schumacher, 1817: synonym of ''Tutufa (Tutufella)'' Beu, 1981 * ''Lampasopsis'' Jousseaume, 1881: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Pseudobursa'' Rovereto, 1899: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Tritonoranella'' Oyama, 1964: synonym of ''Bursa'' Röding, 1798 * ''Tutufella'' Beu, 1981: synonym of ''Tutufa (Tutufella)'' Beu, 1981

References

Footnotes

* Bouchet P. & Rocroi J.-P. (2005) ''Classification and nomenclator of gastropod families''. Malacologia 47(1-2): 1-397.

External links

Beu A.G. 1998. I''ndo-West Pacific Ranellidae, Bursidae and Personidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda). A monograph of the New Caledonian fauna and revisions of related taxa.'' Mémoires du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle 178: 1-255

{{Taxonbar, from=Q822898 Taxa named by Johannes Thiele (zoologist)