''Turricula nelliae'' is a species of

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 in the family

Clavatulidae Clavatulidae is a taxonomic family of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea. The family is not well differentiated morphologically. Clavatulidae was raised, based on cladistic analysis, from subfamily to the family ...

. There is one subspecies: ''Turricula nelliae spuria'' (Hedley, 1922) (synonyms: ''Pleurotoma tuberculata'' Gray, 1839, ''Pleurotoma punctata'' Reeve, 1845; ''Inquisitor spurius'' Hedley, 1922). It differs from ''Turicula nelliae nelliae'' by a flexed anterior canal and having 14–17 peripheral nodes per whorl.

Description

The size of an adult shell varies between 30 mm and 40 mm. The turreted shell has a fusiform shape. It contains 12 strongly excavated

whorl 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 ...

s. A species of charming form and purity, with whorls strongly excavated above, and a row of upright oblong tubercles encircling their bases, and two small contiguous keels around them just below the suture. The basal spirals are numerous and plain. The aperture together with 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 ...

equals almost half the length of the shell. The anterior canal is straight. The upper part of the thin outer lip is slightly incised. The siphonal canal is slightly oblique and recurved backwards.E.A. Smith (1877), Diagnoses of new species of Pleurotomidae in the British Museum; The Annals and magazine of natural history; zoology, botany,... ser.4 vol. 19 p. 489
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Distribution

This species has a wide distribution in the Indian Ocean, and from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

to Australia ( Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia).

References

* Miller, John A. "The feeding and prey capture mechanism of Turricula nelliae spurius (Hedley)(Gastropoda: Turridae)." The Marine Flora and Fauna of Hong Kong and Southern China II: Behaviour, morphology, physiology and pollution 3 (1990): 979. * Taylor, John D. "The anterior alimentary system and diet of Turricula nelliae spurius (Gastropoda: Turridae)." Proc. Second Int. Workshop on the Malacofauna of Hong Kong and Southern China. Hong Kong Univ. Press, Hong Kong. Eds. B. Morton, and D. Dudgeon. 1985. * Liu J.Y. uiyu(ed.). (2008). ''Checklist of marine biota of China seas''. China Science Press. 1267 pp.

External links

Indo-Pacific Mollusca; Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Delaware Museum of Natural History v. 2 no. 9–10 (1968–1969)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turricula Nelliae nelliae Gastropods described in 1877