''Lotoria lotoria'', common name the black-spotted snail or washing bath triton, is a species of

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 ...

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 tropical 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 ...

Cymatiidae Cymatiidae is a family of large sea snails in the superfamily Tonnoidea and the order Littorinimorpha. Members of this family are predators. Genera The family Cymatiidae contains the following genera: * '' Argobuccinum'' Herrmannsen, 1846 * '' ...

. This species was previously known as ''Cymatium lotorium''.

Fossil records

Fossils from this family date back to the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

(age range: from 55.8 to 0.012 million years ago).

Description

Shells of ''Lotoria lotoria'' can reach a size of . The shell is somewhat fusiformly turreted, thick, solid, distorted at the lower part, with four or five varices. 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 rude and rather obtuse. The

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 are angulated at the upper part, obsoletely depressly ribbed with the ribs crenulated. The shell is reddish yellow, ornamented above 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 ...

and upon the varices between the ribs with blackish brown. 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 more or less obsoletely plaited. 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 denticulated. The

siphonal canal The siphonal canal is an anatomical feature of the shells of certain groups of sea snails within the clade Neogastropoda. Some sea marine gastropods have a soft tubular anterior extension of the mantle called a siphon through which water i ...

is short and broad.

Distribution

This species of marine snail lives in the tropical

Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

oceans,Discover life
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Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

, the

Marquesas Islands The Marquesas Islands ( ; or ' or ' ; Marquesan language, Marquesan: ' (North Marquesan language, North Marquesan) and ' (South Marquesan language, South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcano, volcanic islands in ...

and off Australia (

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

)

Habitat

''Lotoria lotoria'' is quite common in coral reefs in Australia and the Indian Ocean.

References

* Lamarck J.B. (1816). Liste des objets représentés dans les planches de cette livraison. In: Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la Nature. Mollusques et Polypes divers. Agasse, Paris. 16 pp. * Röding, P.F. 1798. Museum Boltenianum sive Catalogus cimeliorum e tribus regnis naturae quae olim collegerat Joa. Hamburg : Trappii 199 pp. * Allan, J.K. 1950. Australian shells: with related animals living in the sea, in freshwater and on the land. Melbourne : Georgian House xix, 470 pp., 45 pls, 112 text figs. * Satyamurti, S.T. 1952. Mollusca of Krusadai Is. I. Amphineura and Gastropoda. Bulletin of the Madras Government Museum, Natural History ns 1(no. 2, pt 6): 267 pp., 34 pls [141, pl. 12, * Rippingale, O.H. & McMichael, D.F. 1961. Queensland and Great Barrier Reef shells. Brisbane : Jacaranda Press 210 pp. * Beu, A.G. 1969. Murex lotorium Linnaues, 1758 (Mollusca, Gastropoda): request for validation in its accustomed sense under the plenary powers. Z.N.(S). 1886. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 26(3): 174-176 * Wilson, B.R. & Gillett, K. 1971. Australian shells: illustrating and describing 600 species of marine gastropods found in Australian waters. Sydney : Reed Books 168 pp. * Hinton, A. 1972. Shells of New Guinea and the central Indo-Pacific. Milton : Jacaranda Press xviii 94 pp. * Salvat, B. & Rives, C. 1975. Coquillages de Polynésie. Tahiti : Papéete Les editions du pacifique, 391 pp. * Coleman, N. 1975. What Shell is That? Sydney : Lansdowne Press 298 pp. * Drivas, J.; Jay, M. (1987). ''Coquillages de La Réunion et de l'Île Maurice''. Collection Les Beautés de la Nature. Delachaux et Niestlé: Neuchâtel. . 159 pp * Henning, T. & Hemmen, J. 1993. Ranellidae and Personidae of the World. Wiesbaden, Germany : V.C. Hemmen 263 pp. * Wilson, B. 1993. Australian Marine Shells. Prosobranch Gastropods. Kallaroo, Western Australia : Odyssey Publishing Vol. 1 408 pp. * Beu, A.G. 1998. Indo-West Pacific Ranellidae, Bursidae and Personidae. A monograph of the New Caledonian fauna, with revisions of related taxa. Mémoires du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris [1936-1950] 178: 1-256 * Liu J.Y. [Ruiyu] (ed.). (2008). ''Checklist of marine biota of China seas''. China Science Press. 1267 pp * Tröndlé, J. & M. Boutet 2009. Inventory of marine molluscs of French Polynesia. Atoll Research Bulletin 570: 1-87 * Severns, M. 2011. Shells of Hawaiian Islands: the sea shells. The verifiable species and their described variants illustrated by 2828 images on 225 plates. Hachenheim, Germany : ConchBooks. * Beu, A.G., Bouchet, P. & Tröndlé, J. 2012. Tonnoidean gastropods of French Polynesia. Molluscan Research 32(2): 61-120

External links

Linnaeus, C. (1758). Systema Naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Editio decima, reformata. Laurentius Salvius: Holmiae. ii, 824 pp

Conchology

Emerson W.K. & Old W.E. (1963). A new subgenus and species of Cymatium (Mollusca, Gastropoda). ''American Museum Novitates''. 2137: 1–13
{{Taxonbar, from=Q6684830 Cymatiidae Gastropods described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus