''Charonia tritonis'',

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 con ...

the Triton's trumpet, the giant triton or is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of very large

sea snail Sea snails are slow-moving marine (ocean), marine gastropod Mollusca, molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the Taxonomic classification, taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguishe ...

, a marine

gastropod Gastropods (), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and fro ...

mollusc Mollusca is a phylum of protostome, protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant taxon, extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum ...

in the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Charoniidae, the tritons. Reaching up to two feet (or 60 cm) in shell length this is one of the biggest mollusks in the coral reef.

Distribution

This species is found 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 ...

Oceans,

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

included.

Description

Feeding habits

''C. tritonis'' is one of the few animals to feed on the crown-of-thorns starfish, '' Acanthaster planci''. Occasional plagues of this large and destructive starfish have killed extensive areas of coral on the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

of Australia and the western Pacific reefs. The triton has been described as tearing the starfish to pieces with its file-like

radula The radula (; : radulae or radulas) is an anatomical structure used by mollusks 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 enters ...

Human use

The shell is well known as a decorative object, and is sometimes modified for use as a trumpet (such as the Japanese '' horagai'', the Maldivian '' sangu'', the Hawaiian ''pū (hoʻokani)'' or the Māori '' pūtātara''). Much debate has occurred on whether plagues of

crown-of-thorns starfish The crown-of-thorns starfish (frequently abbreviated to COTS), ''Acanthaster planci'', is a large starfish that preys upon hard, or stony, coral polyps (Scleractinia). The crown-of-thorns starfish receives its name from venomous thornlike spines ...

are natural or are caused by overfishing of the few organisms that can eat this starfish, including ''C. tritonis''. In 1994, Australia proposed that ''C. tritonis'' should be put on the

CITES CITES (shorter acronym for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of inte ...

list, thereby attempting to protect the species. Because of a lack of trade data concerning this seashell, the Berne Criteria from CITES were not met, and the proposal was consequently withdrawn. While this species may be protected in Australia and other countries (such as India),India Ministry of Environment and Forests Notification S.O. 665(E)
. New Delhi, 11 July 2001.] it can be legally traded and is found for sale in many shell shops around the world and on the internet.

References

Bibliography

External links

doriss.ffessm.fr

na.oceana.org

cites.org
(

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

) * Charoniidae Gastropods described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Caenogastropoda-stub