''Gaza daedala'' 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 ...

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 ...

Margaritidae.Rosenberg, G. (2012). ''Gaza daedala'' Watson, 1879. Accessed through:

World Register of Marine Species The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a taxonomic database that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive catalogue and list of names of marine organisms. Content The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scien ...

at http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=594177 on 2012-12-03

Distribution

This marine species occurs in the Pacific Ocean off

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 ...

at a depth of 1100 m.

Description

(Original description by Watson) The height of the shell attains 20.6 mm, its diameter 17 mm. The thin shell has a depressedly globose shape with a convexly conical spire. It is translucent, horny, nacreous in its whole texture, and iridescent on the surface. It has a slightly reverted and narrowly thickened

lip The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...

and a thin edged twisted

columella Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (, Arabic: ) was a prominent Roman writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire. His in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture and ancient Roman cuisin ...

, the point of which runs out into a bluntly mucronated angle.

Sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

: Longitudinals—the whole surface is covered with strong, puckered, oblique lines of growth, which are sharp-edged but flattened,. They are rather regular, with many minuter ones in the intervals. The longitudinals are crosshatched with spirals, which are stronger and more regular, but not perfectly uniform. They consist of square threads and furrows of equal breadth, and both scored by the longitudinals. On the earlier

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). In nature File:Photograph and axial plane floral diagra ...

s these spirals disappear before the longitudinals do. And on the base of the shell they become on the outside feebler, closer, and finer, in the middle broader and flatter, and stronger again toward the centre of the shell. The colorof the shell is delicate yellowish, with a horny translucency and exquisite iridescence, which under the lens appears brilliant. The spire is high and slightly scalar. The apex is very small, flatly rounded, the embryonic 1½ whorl very slightly projecting. The seven whorls increase gradually. They are well rounded, the last slightly angulated below, and on the base flattened, but rather less so towards the aperture, where there is a slight contraction and downward turning of the whole whorl, without, however, any descending of the

at its junction with the body. The suture is very distinct, but not impressed. The aperture is rather large, very oblique, semioval. The outer lip is reflected and thickened internally by a strong but narrow, equal, rounded, white pearly callus, which almost disappears just at the upper corner, and which has a very slight furrow round its margin. It does not descend at all. Inner lip—from the corner of the outer lip a very thin layer of nacre spreads out a little way across the body, but then ceases entirely. The columella is spread out at its base as a confined, flattened, unevenly inclined, semicircular, iridescent umbilical pad. From the left corner of which the columella proper projects, it has a narrow but rounded edge, twisted, straight, bending to the left, and advances into a sharply angulated, and, as seen from behind, even mucronated junction with the basal aperture edge, to which the umbilical pad curving round the back of the pillar also attains. The inside is scored with the external sculpture, and is brilliantly iridescent. The umbilical pad is defined by a narrow furrow, and in front by a slightly tumid ridge, which is the least nacreous part of the whole shell. The operculum is membranaceous, horny, yellowish, with about six to seven turns, each strongly defined by a narrow line of thickening, and sharply scored with minute oblique radiating lines.Tryon (1889), Manual of Conchology XI, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia
/ref>

References

External links

Luiz Ricardo L. Simone & Carlo M. Cunha, ''Revision of genera Gaza and Callogaza (Vetigastropoda, Trochidae), with description of a new Brazilian species''; Zootaxa1318: 1–40 (2006)
{{Taxonbar, from=Q5528982 daedala Gastropods described in 1879