''Callianax biplicata'',

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 contrast ...

s the "purple dwarf olive" "purple olive shell" or "purple olivella" 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 ...

of small

predatory Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

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 Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

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 ...

mollusc 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 esti ...

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 ...

Olividae Olive snails, also known as olive shells and olives, scientific name Olividae, are a taxonomic family of medium to large predatory sea snails with smooth, shiny, elongated oval-shaped shells.Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. (2012). Olividae. Accessed throu ...

, the olives. MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Callianax biplicata (G. B. Sowerby I, 1825). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1424883 on 2021-11-04

Distribution

''Callianax biplicata'' snails are found in the Eastern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

coasts from

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

Habitat

This species is common on sandy substrates intertidally and subtidally, in bays and the outer coast.Dave Cowles. 2005
''Olivella biplicata (Sowerby, 1825)''
. accessed 22 November 2008.

Life habits

These snails are

carnivorous A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...

or omnivorous sand-burrowers.

Shell description

This shell of this species is quite solid, and large for an ''Olivella'', with adult shells ranging from 20 mm to 27 mm in length, about one inch. The shell is smooth, shiny, and is an elongated oval in shape. The shell is often some shade of greyish purple, but it can also be whitish, tan, or dark brown. On the darker color forms there is often some rich yellow above the suture on the

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

. At the anterior end of the long narrow

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

there is a siphonal notch, from which the

siphon A siphon (from grc, σίφων, síphōn, "pipe, tube", also spelled nonetymologically syphon) is any of a wide variety of devices that involve the flow of liquids through tubes. In a narrower sense, the word refers particularly to a tube in a ...

of the living animal protrudes.

Image:Olivella biplicata.jpg, ''Callianax biplicata'', a pale individual Image:Olivella biplicata 2.jpg, ''Callianax biplicata'', the dark morph Pagurus in Olivella biplicata

Human use

Native people of central and southern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

used the shell of this species to make decorative beads for at least the last 9,000 years. Such beads have been discovered in archaeological contexts as far inland as Idaho and Arizona. Within the past 1,000 years these beads began to be manufactured in large quantities on southern California's

Santa Barbara Channel Islands The Channel Islands () are an eight-island archipelago located within the Southern California Bight in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. The four Northern Channel Islands are part of the Transverse Ranges geologic province, and ...

, indicating that they were used for shell money. The historic Chumash people called them ''anchum''.Daily Life in a Chumash village
. last change 4 August 2005, accessed 22 November 2008.

Notes

References

* Arnold, J.E. and A.P. Graesch. 2001. The Evolution of Specialized Shellworking Among the Island Chumash. In ''The Origins of a Pacific Coast Chiefdom: the Chumash of the Channel Islands'', edited by J.E. Arnold, pp. 71–112. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. * Bennyhoff, James A. and Richard E. Hughes. 1987. Shell Bead and Ornament Exchange Networks between California and the Western Great Basin. ''Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History'' 64:79-175. * Fitzgerald, Richard T., Terry L. Jones, and Adele Schroth. 2005. Ancient Long Distance Trade in Western North America: New AMS Radiocarbon Dates from Southern California. ''Journal of Archaeological Science'' 32:423-434. * McLean, J.H. (2007) Gastropoda. In Carlton, J.T. (Ed.) Light and Smith's Manual. Intertidal Invertebrates of the Central California Coast. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 713-753 * Powell II, C. L.; Vervaet, F.; Berschauer, D. (2020). A taxonomic review of California Holocene Callianax (Olivellidae:Gastropoda:Mollusca) based on shell characters. The Festivus. Supplement - special issue, 1-38.

External links

Sowerby, G. B., I. (1825). A catalogue of the shells contained in the collection of the late Earl of Tankerville : arranged according to the Lamarckian conchological system: together with an appendix, containing descriptions of many new species London, vii + 92 + xxxiv pp

Oldroyd, T.S. (1918). Olivella biplicata angelena, var. nov. The Nautilus. 32(1): 34- 35

Vanatta, E.G. (1915). Notes on Oliva. The Nautilus. 29(6): 67-75
* {{commons category, Olivella biplicata Olivellinae Native American culture Gastropods described in 1825 Taxa named by George Brettingham Sowerby I