''Neptunea arthritica'' 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

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 ...

Buccinidae The Buccinidae are a very large and diverse taxonomic family of large sea snails, often known as whelks or true whelks.Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. (2010). Buccinidae. In: Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S.; Rosenberg, G. (2010) World Marine Mollusca database. A ...

, the true whelks.MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Neptunea arthritica (Valenciennes, 1858). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=196600 on 2021-09-20

Description

The length of the shell attains 75.4 mm.

Distribution

This species occurs off

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and as an alien species in the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

Toxicity

''N. arthritica'' contains toxic

tetramethylammonium Tetramethylammonium (TMA) or (Me4N+) is the simplest quaternary ammonium cation, consisting of four methyl groups attached to a central nitrogen atom, and is isoelectronic with neopentane. It is positively charged and can only be isolated in asso ...

salts (referred to as "tetramine" in this context) in its tissues, especially the salivary gland, and has the potential to cause human poisoning.U. Anthoni, L. Bohlin, C. Larsen, P. Nielsen, N. H. Nielsen, and C. Christophersen (1989). "Tetramine: Occurrence in marine organisms and pharmacology." ''Toxicon'' 27 707-716.

References

* Shadrin, N.V., Mironov, S.S. & Golicov, A.N., 2002. A finding of the alive Neptunea arthritica (Bernardi, 1857) (Gastropoda, Buccinidae) in the Black Sea. Ekologiya Morya 62:29.

External links

Valenciennes A. (1858) Note sur une suite intéressante de coquilles rapportées des mers du Japon, et de la Manche de Tartarie, par M. le Dr Barthe. Compte Rendu des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences [Paris
46: 759-762]
Adams, A. (1864). On the species of Fusidae which inhabit the seas of Japan. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology. 7: 105-108.

Katsanevakis, S.; Bogucarskis, K.; Gatto, F.; Vandekerkhove, J.; Deriu, I.; Cardoso A.S. (2012). Building the European Alien Species Information Network (EASIN): a novel approach for the exploration of distributed alien species data. BioInvasions Records. 1: 235-245

Kantor Y.I. & Sysoev A.V. 2002. ''On the species of molluscs from Russian waters described by Achille Valenciennes
in little known publications in 1858''. Ruthenica, 12(2): 119–123] Buccinidae Gastropods described in 1858 Gastropods described in 1858] {{Buccinidae-stub