''Harpa cabriti'', previously known as ''Harpa ventricosa'' Lamarck, 1816,Rehder H. A. (1992). "''Harpa cabriti'' Fischer, 1860, a replacement name for ''Harpa ventricosa'' Lamarck, 1816". ''

The Nautilus ''Nautilus'' is the fictional submarine belonging to Captain Nemo featured in Jules Verne's novels ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (1870) and '' The Mysterious Island'' (1875). Description ''Nautilus'' is described by Verne as ...

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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 ventral harp, 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 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

predatory Predation is a biological interaction in which 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 ...

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

Harpidae The Harpidae, known as the harp snails, are the members of a taxonomic family of large predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks. This family is temporarily classified in the superfamily Neogastropoda incertae sedis. MolluscaBase eds. (2 ...

, the harp snails.Bouchet, P. (2015). Harpa cabriti P. Fischer, 1860. In: MolluscaBase (2015). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=403831 on 2016-05-26 The shell is often collected by shell-collecting hobbyists.

Description

The pretty large, oval shell is ventricose, and polished. It is ornamented with more or less distant, wide, compressed, smooth, parallel ribs, inclined towards the base, of a pale rose color, most commonly with quadrangular deep brown spots. These ribs are pointed at their summit, and a little below these form a slight keel, caused by small asperities. The interstice between the ribs is slightly striated longitudinally. The ground color of the shell is whitish or violet, adorned with brown or reddish spots, forming regular festoons throughout its whole length. There are found also upon the surface of the shell two or three bands, sometimes replaced by large spots, which alike surround it. The middle band is always most apparent. 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. Spire ...

is short and is composed of six

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 slightly flattened above. The large

aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

is reddish, terminated at its base by an oblique, shallow emargination, marked within with brown spots or bands. The outer

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 ...

is bordered externally by the last rib. The

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 ...

is smooth, brilliant, and almost covered with very dark brown spots.Kiener (1840). General species and iconography of recent shells : comprising the Massena Museum, the collection of Lamarck, the collection of the Museum of Natural History, and the recent discoveries of travellers; Boston :W.D. Ticknor,1837
(described as ''Harpa ventricosa'')

Distribution

This marine snail is found from the

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 ...

south to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. It lives in the Indian and

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

References

* DANCE, S.P. & G.T. POPPE, 1999 ''Family Harpidae''. In : A Conchological Iconography (ConchBooks, ed.), 69 p

External links

*
Page with an image from the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam
{{Taxonbar, from=Q3013200 cabriti Gastropods described in 1816