''Coriocella nigra'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

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 ...

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

in the

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

Velutinidae Velutinidae is a family of small sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the clade Littorinimorpha.Gofas, S. (2014). Velutinidae Gray, 1840. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetail ...

. An Indo-Pacific species, it lives on rocks at depths of up to 15 m. It is up to 10 cm long and has an internal shell; body color is black or brown. ''C. nigra'' is probably a predator of

tunicate A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata (). It is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords (including vertebrates). The subphylum was at one time ca ...

Taxonomy

This species was described as ''Coriocella nigra'' by French zoologist

Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (; 12 September 1777 – 1 May 1850) was a French zoologist and anatomist. Life Blainville was born at Arques, near Dieppe. As a young man he went to Paris to study art, but ultimately devoted himself to natur ...

in 1824 and he placed it in the newly established genus ''Coriocella'' as its only species at that time. ''Coriocella nigra'' is the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

of the genus ''Coriocella''. Nowadays, at least six other species are recognized in the genus ''Coriocella'' and Blainville's binomial name is still treated as valid and in use.

Distribution

The distribution of ''Coriocella nigra'' is Indo-Pacific and includes

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...

, Kenya,"Coriocella nigra"
. NidiPixel, accessed 5 October 2017. Madagascar, Mauritius, Marcus Ev. & Marcus Er. (1970). "Some gastropods from Madagascar and West Mexico". ''Malacologia'' 10(1)
181
223. Réunion, Mayotte,

Gulf of Aden The Gulf of Aden ( ar, خليج عدن, so, Gacanka Cadmeed 𐒅𐒖𐒐𐒕𐒌 𐒋𐒖𐒆𐒗𐒒) is a deepwater gulf of the Indian Ocean between Yemen to the north, the Arabian Sea to the east, Djibouti to the west, and the Guardafui Channe ...

, Gulf of Elat, South Button Island,Kumar J. Y., Raghunathan C. & Venkataraman K. (2015). "Research Article A report on some symbiotic shrimps (Crustacea: Decapoda) from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India". '' Sch. Acad. J. Biosci.'' 3(1B): 113–119
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Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia,

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

, northern Australia and eastern Australia,Beechey D. (2017)
"Coriocella nigra".
''The Seashells of New South Wales'', last change 14 April 2017, accessed 5 October 2017.

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

,Gosliner T. M. (2006). "Marine Gastropoda collected by the Steamer Albatros from the Phlippines in 1908". ''

Records of the Western Australian Museum The Western Australian Museum is a statutory authority within the Culture and the Arts Portfolio, established under the ''Museum Act 1969''. The museum has six main sites. The state museum, now known as WA Museum Boola Bardip, officially re-ope ...

'' Supplement, 69'': 83–93
PDF
Palau,

Society Islands The Society Islands (french: Îles de la Société, officially ''Archipel de la Société;'' ty, Tōtaiete mā) are an archipelago located in the South Pacific Ocean. Politically, they are part of French Polynesia, an overseas country of the F ...

in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Japan, and Hawaii.Pittman C. & Fiene P
"''Coriocella nigra''"
Sea Slugs of Hawaii by Cory Pittman & Pauline Fiene. Accessed 5 october 2017. The type locality is

Isle de France (Mauritius) Isle de France () was the name of the Indian Ocean island which is known as Mauritius and its dependent territories between 1715 and 1810, when the area was under the French East India Company and a part of the French colonial empire. Under th ...

Description

The color of the body may vary from uniformly velvety black to brown. The

mantle A mantle is a piece of clothing, a type of cloak. Several other meanings are derived from that. Mantle may refer to: *Mantle (clothing), a cloak-like garment worn mainly by women as fashionable outerwear **Mantle (vesture), an Eastern Orthodox ve ...

is broadly tuberculate. The borders of the mantle are delicate, notched in front and spreading out widely. The foot is small and oval. There are four or five lobes or bosses on the dorsal part of its body. There is an inhalant

siphon A siphon (from grc, σίφων, síphōn, "pipe, tube", also spelled nonetymologically syphon) is any of a wide variety of devices that involve the flow of liquids through tubes. In a narrower sense, the word refers particularly to a tube in a ...

extended in the middle of the front part of the body. The tentacles are triangular, granulated and are spotted with white. There are brown eyes at the base of the tentacles. The front part of the foot is grooved. There is a jaw and a

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 ...

with 48 teeth in the mouth. The body length is usually about 80 mm. The body length varies from 15–18 mm up to 10 cm.Coriocelle noire
. DORIS, accessed 5 october 2017. The width of the body is 8–10 mm (in body length 15–18 mm). ''C. nigra'' has an internal and reduced

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard ou ...

, and spirally rolled

, as have all the members of the family Velutinidae. The shell is conchinous and it has 2½ or three

whorls A whorl ( or ) is an individual circle, oval, volution or equivalent in a whorled pattern, which consists of a spiral or multiple concentric objects (including circles, ovals and arcs). Whorls in nature File:Photograph and axial plane floral d ...

. Whorls are expanding rapidly and the

last whorl The body whorl is part of the morphology of the shell in those gastropod mollusks that possess a coiled shell. The term is also sometimes used in a similar way to describe the shell of a cephalopod mollusk. In gastropods In gastropods, the b ...

cover four fifths of the shell height. The color of the shell is translucent white. The shell is smooth with irregular growth lines. The

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

is large. Shell width is 6.3 mm (for a shell length of 10 mm). Shell length varies from 10 mm to 30–40 mm.

Ecology

It lives on rocky habitats. On Hawaii it lives among '' Halimeda kanaloana''. In Australia it inhabits

intertidal The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore, is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide (in other words, the area within the tidal range). This area can include several types of Marine habitat, habitats with var ...

and

subtidal The neritic zone (or sublittoral zone) is the relatively shallow part of the ocean above the drop-off of the continental shelf, approximately in depth. From the point of view of marine biology it forms a relatively stable and well-illuminated ...

zone . It has been reported from depths of 1–4 m, to 12 m and to 15 m.Rudman W. B. (Oct 5 1999). "Comment on ''Coriocella nigra'' from Japan by H. Ono". essage inSea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/1400 Accessed 5 october 2017. ''C. nigra'' is carnivorous. Its probable prey are

tunicates A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata (). It is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords (including vertebrates). The subphylum was at one time ca ...

, including tunicates from the family

Didemnidae Didemnidae, or Didemnidæ, is a family of colonial tunicates in the order Enterogona. These marine animals are found in shallow water on the seabed. Members of this family have small zooids that form encrusting colonies. The body of each zooid i ...

in Hawaii. Its fecal pellets are oval and layered. Sclerites of

Octocorallia Octocorallia (also known as Alcyonaria) is a class of Anthozoa comprising around 3,000 species of water-based organisms formed of colonial polyps with 8-fold symmetry. It includes the blue coral, soft corals, sea pens, and gorgonians (sea fan ...

have also been found in its gut. The ostracod '' Pontocypria coriocellae'' lives as an occasional commensal in the oral tube of ''C. nigra''.Wouters K. (1991). "A new species of the genus ''Pontocypria'' (Crustacea, Ostracoda), commensal of a lamellariid gastropod". 'Bulletin. Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique. Mededelingen. Koninklijk Belgisch Instituut voor Natuurwetenschappen'' 61: 65–71
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The shell of ''C. nigra'' is sometimes used by a hermit crab, '' Clibanarius virescens''.Nakin M. D. V. & Somers M. J. (2007). "Shell availability and use by the hermit crab ''Clibanarius virescens'' along the eastern Cape coast, South Africa". ''

Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae ''Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae'' is a peer-reviewed, open access scientific journal no-publication fee, publishing original research studies in the fields of animal taxonomy, systematics, biogeography, and ecology. It was estab ...

'' 53(2): 149–155.

Staurosporine Staurosporine (antibiotic AM-2282 or STS) is a natural product originally isolated in 1977 from the bacterium '' Streptomyces staurosporeus''. It was the first of over 50 alkaloids to be isolated with this type of bis-indole chemical structure. Th ...

s 4′-N-demethyl-11-hydroxystaurosporine and 3,11-dihydroxystaurosporine have been isolated from ''C. nigra''.Cantrell C. L., Groweiss A., Gustafson K. R. & Boyd M. R. (1999). "A new staurosporine analog from the prosobranch mollusk ''Coriocella nigra''". '' Natural Product Letters'' 14: 39–46. .

References

External links

* Vayssière A. (1911). "Recherches zoologiques et anatomiques sur les Opisthobranches de Ia Mer Rouge et du Golfe d'Aden". '' Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Marseille'' tom. 20(Suppl.), fasc. 2: 1–157, pis. 1–11. Plate 11, fig. 167. * Wellens W. (1998). "Redescription of ''Coriocella nigra'' de Blainville 1825 and ''Chelyonotus tonganus'' Quoy and Gaimard 1832 (Gastropoda: Prosobranchia: Lamellariidae)". ''

Journal of Conchology The ''Journal of Conchology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by The Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, covering research in conchology and malacology. It claims to be the world's oldest continuing publication on t ...

'' 36: 43–61. * 沼波秀樹, 関田梨恵 & 荒井碧. (2007). "P16. 殻が内在するイボベッコウタマガイ (腹足綱: ハナヅトガイ科) の生き残り戦略 (日本貝類学会平成 19 年度大会 (豊橋) 研究発表要旨)". ''Venus: journal of the Malacological Society of Japan'' 66(1): 122
CiNii
* Tryon G. W. (1882). ''Structural and systematic conchology: an introduction to the study of the Mollusca''. volume I, Philadelphia, published by the author
plate 62
figure 62-63. * Beechey F. W. (1839). "The zoology of Captain Beechey's voyage". London
page 133
* Chenu J. C. (1859–1862) "Manuel de conchyliologie et paléontologie conchlyliologique". t. 1–2. Paris
page 212

''Coriocella nigra'' video
* {{Taxonbar, from=Q13497519 Velutinidae Gastropods described in 1824