''Lissodrillia verrillii'' 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 ...

.Bouchet, P. (2016). Lissodrillia verrillii (Dall, 1881). In: MolluscaBase (2015). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=872141 on 2016-07-30 It was named by W.H. Dall after the American

malacologist Malacology, from Ancient Greek μαλακός (''malakós''), meaning "soft", and λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (molluscs or mollusks), the second-largest ...

Addison Emory Verrill (1839-1926), the first professor of zoology at the

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

Description

The shell grows to a length of 5.5 mm. The shell resembles '' Drillia oleacina'' on a very small scale. It is white, with a large white, smooth, inflated

protoconch A protoconch (meaning first or earliest or original shell) is an embryonic or larval shell which occurs in some classes of molluscs, e.g., the initial chamber of an ammonite or the larval shell of a gastropod. In older texts it is also called " ...

. It contains six or seven

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, rounded, polished, translucent waxen whitish. It is transversely sculptured by twelve to fourteen rounded, stout, strongly raised ribs extending forward from the notch-band to the suture, or on 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 ...

to its anterior third. On the last half of the last turn it is evanescent. The suture is appressed The lines of growth are evident. There is no spiral

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 ...

visible. A decided callus with a groove behind it is visible on 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 ...

and the body whorl notch, as usual in the adult, rather deep. The

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 rather wide behind, and shaped as in '' Drillia oleacina''.Dall, W. H. 1881. Reports on the results of dredging, under the supervision of Alexander Agassiz, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Caribbean Sea, 1877-79, by the United States Coast Survey Steamer 'Blake,'. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 9: 33–144
(described as ''Pleurotoma (Drillia) verrillii'' )

Distribution

The species occurs in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

and the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

at depths between 73 m and 567 m.

References

Rosenberg, G., F. Moretzsohn, and E. F. García. 2009. ''Gastropoda (Mollusca) of the Gulf of Mexico'', Pp. 579–699 in Felder, D.L. and D.K. Camp (eds.), Gulf of Mexico–Origins, Waters, and Biota. Biodiversity. Texas A&M Press, College Station, Texas

External links

Tucker, J.K. 2004 ''Catalog of recent and fossil turrids (Mollusca: Gastropoda)''. Zootaxa 682:1–1295
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lissodrillia Verrillii verrillii Gastropods described in 1881