''Smaragdia souverbiana'' 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 ...

Neritidae Neritidae, common name the nerites, is a taxonomic family of small to medium-sized saltwater and freshwater snails which have a gill and a distinctive operculum. MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Neritininae Poey, 1852. Accessed through: ...

Description

''Smaragdia souverbiana'' is a small (<2mm aperture) seagrass associated Nerite. Its shell is sand to green in colour, with distinctive thin black bands with embedded clear diamonds across the whorls. It is commonly found in seagrasses, where it is believed to feed directly on seagrass cells (rather than

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...

epiphyte An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phoroph ...

like many other seagrass associated gastropods). Feces examined from specimens collected from the intertidal zone contained both seagrass and epiphyte material.

Distribution

This species is distributed in the Indian Ocean along

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

and the

Aldabra Aldabra is the world's second-largest coral atoll, lying south-east of the continent of Africa. It is part of the Aldabra Group of islands in the Indian Ocean that are part of the Outer Islands of the Seychelles, with a distance of 1,120 k ...

Atoll, and in 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 the ea ...

. It is also widely distributed throughout 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 ...

, with records of its collection along the east (as far south as southern New South Wales) and west coasts for Australia, through Indonesia and Malaysia to the Philippines and New Caledonia.

References

* Dautzenberg, Ph. (1929). ''Mollusques testacés marins de Madagascar''. Faune des Colonies Francaises, Tome III * Fischer-Piette, E. & Vukadinovic, D. (1973). Sur les Mollusques Fluviatiles de Madagascar. Malacologia. 12: 339-378. * Taylor, J.D. (1973). ''Provisional list of the mollusca of Aldabra Atoll'' * Fischer-Piette, E. & Vukadinovic, D. (1974). Les Mollusques terrestres des Iles Comores. Mémoires du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Nouvelle Série, Série A, Zoologie, 84: 1-76, 1 plate. Paris. * Gofas, S.; Le Renard, J.; Bouchet, P. (2001). ''Mollusca, in: Costello, M.J. et al. (Ed.) (2001). European register of marine species: a check-list of the marine species in Europe and a bibliography of guides to their identification''. Collection Patrimoines Naturels, 50: pp. 180–213 * Streftaris, N.; Zenetos, A.; Papathanassiou, E. (2005). ''Globalisation in marine ecosystems: the story of non-indigenous marine species across European seas''. Oceanogr. Mar. Biol. Annu. Rev. 43: 419–453 * Fowler, O. (2016). Seashells of the Kenya coast. ConchBooks: Harxheim. Pp. 1–170.

External links

Souverbie [S.-M.
& Montrouzier [X.">.-M.">Souverbie [S.-M.
& Montrouzier [X. (1863). Description d'espèces nouvelles. Journal de Conchyliologie. 11: 74-77]
Angas, G. F. (1871). Description of thirty-four new species of shells from Australia. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. (1871): 13-21, pl. 1

Tapparone Canefri, C. (1875). Contribuzioni per una fauna delle isole papuane. II. Descrizione di alcune spezie nuove o mal conosciute delle isole Aru, Sorong e Kei Bandan. Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Genova. 7: 1028-1033

Gassies, J. B. (1863). Faune conchyliologique terrestre et fluvio-lacustre de la Nouvelle-Calédonie

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

Zenetos, A.; Çinar, M.E.; Pancucci-Papadopoulou, M.A.; Harmelin, J.-G.; Furnari, G.; Andaloro, F.; Bellou, N.; Streftaris, N.; Zibrowius, H. (2005). Annotated list of marine alien species in the Mediterranean with records of the worst invasive species. Mediterranean Marine Science. 6 (2): 63-118
Neritidae Gastropods described in 1863 {{Neritidae-stub