''Iredalea pygmaea'' 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), ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

Drilliidae The Drilliidae are a taxonomic family of small predatory sea snails with high-spired shells. They are classified as marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea. This family has no subfamilies. It consists of about 30 genera and approx ...

.MolluscaBase eds. (2023). MolluscaBase. Iredalea pygmaea (Dunker, 1860). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=762256 on 2023-09-17

Description

The length of the shell attains 5 mm. The light-brown shell is longitudinally plicate. The plicae are evanescent towards the base of the

body whorl The body whorl is part of the morphology (biology), morphology of the gastropod shell, shell in those gastropod mollusks that possess a coiled shell. The term is also sometimes used in a similar way to describe the shell of a cephalopod mollusk ...

.G.W. Tryon (1884) Manual of Conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species, vol. VI; Philadelphia, Academy of Natural Sciences
(described as ''Mangilia pygmaea'')

Distribution

This marine species occurs off

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

and

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

References

* Liu J.Y. uiyu(ed.). (2008). ''Checklist of marine biota of China seas''. China Science Press. 1267 pp.

External links

*
Dunker, W. (1860). Neue japanische Mollusken. Malakozoologische Blätter. 6: 221-240

Tucker, J.K. 2004 ''Catalog of recent and fossil turrids (Mollusca: Gastropoda)''. Zootaxa 682:1–1295.
pygmaea {{Drilliidae-stub