''Melampus coffea'', commonly known as the coffee bean snail, 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 small air-breathing

salt marsh A salt marsh, saltmarsh or salting, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. I ...

snail, a

pulmonate Pulmonata or pulmonates is an informal group (previously an order, and before that, a subclass) of snails and slugs characterized by the ability to breathe air, by virtue of having a pallial lung instead of a gill, or gills. The group inclu ...

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

Ellobiidae Ellobiidae, common name the hollow-shelled snails, is a family of small air-breathing land, marine, and brackish snails; pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the clade Eupulmonata.Bouchet, P. (2012). Ellobiidae. Accessed through: World Register of M ...

.Rosenberg, G. (2014). Melampus coffea (Linnaeus, 1758). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=420640 on 2015-02-24

Distribution

The coffee bean snail is found on both coasts of

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

and throughout the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

Description

The maximum recorded

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

length is 23 mm.Welch J. J. (2010). "The "Island Rule" and Deep-Sea Gastropods: Re-Examining the Evidence". '' PLoS ONE'' 5(1): e8776. .

Ecology

Minimum recorded depth is -0.3 m. Maximum recorded depth is 0.3 m. This small snail is commonly found in the intertidal zone of

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen a ...

s amongst the roots and branches. It is similar in appearance to '' Melampus bidentatus'' and the two are often confused. ''Melampus bidentatus'' is slightly larger and is more likely to be found in a

as opposed to mangrove habitat for ''Melampus coffea''. Like other species of ''Melampus'', the coffee bean snail is one of the few

snails to reproduce via planktonic larvae called

veliger A veliger is the planktonic larva of many kinds of sea snails and freshwater snails, as well as most bivalve molluscs (clams) and tusk shells. Description The veliger is the characteristic larva of the gastropod, bivalve and scaphopod taxono ...

s (Ruppert & Barnes 1994). Upon hatching, the veligers will spend between 4–6 weeks in the

plankton Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms that drift in Hydrosphere, water (or atmosphere, air) but are unable to actively propel themselves against ocean current, currents (or wind). The individual organisms constituting plankton are ca ...

, and then return to the mangroves on a high tide, and

metamorphose Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically developmental biology, develops including birth, birth transformation or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through ...

into juvenile snails. This species is a

detritivore Detritivores (also known as detrivores, detritophages, detritus feeders or detritus eaters) are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing plant and animal parts as well as feces). There are many kinds of invertebrates, ...

and

herbivore A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically evolved to feed on plants, especially upon vascular tissues such as foliage, fruits or seeds, as the main component of its diet. These more broadly also encompass animals that eat ...

, foraging upon fresh and decaying mangrove leaf litter. The coffee bean snail engages in vertical migration leading up to the time of high tide, in order to escape

inundation A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant concern in agriculture, civi ...

and the increased risk of

predation 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 List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...

by various fish species.McKee K. L. & Faulkner P.. (2000). "Restoration of biogeochemical function in mangrove forests". '' Restor. Ecol.'' 8: 247-259.

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

Malacolog info, spelling ''Melampus coffea''
{{Taxonbar, from=Q6811150 Ellobiidae Gastropods described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus