''Crithe nipponica'' is a species of very small

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 or

micromollusk A micromollusk is a shelled mollusk which is extremely small, even at full adult size. The word is usually, but not exclusively, applied to marine mollusks, although in addition, numerous species of land snails and freshwater mollusks also ...

in the family

Cystiscidae Cystiscidae is a taxonomic family of minute sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks or micromollusks. Description The shell is minute to large, either white, uniformly colored, or patterned; the surface is smooth, sculptured, or axially costate; ...

. They can grow to 1.5 mm in length, and are located in the

benthic zone The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning " ...

. Geographically, they can be found in the

Philippine Sea The Philippine Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean east of the Philippine archipelago (hence the name), the largest in the world, occupying an estimated surface area of . The Philippine Sea Plate forms the floor of the sea. Its ...

References

External links

Coovert G.A. & Coovert H.K. (1995) Revision of the supraspecific classification of marginelliform gastropods. The Nautilus 109(2-3): 43-110
Cystiscidae Gastropods described in 1951 Nipponica {{Cystiscidae-stub