''Notocochlis chemnitzii'', or Chemnitz' moon 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), ...

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 ...

. It was first described to science in 1840 by Ludwig Karl Georg Pfieffer. The animal is likely named after

conchologist Conchology, from Ancient Greek κόγχος (''kónkhos''), meaning "cockle (bivalve), cockle", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is the study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of mollus ...

Johann Hieronymus Chemnitz.

Description

The shell is smooth. There are four to five whorls with a short spire. It is grayish-blue to grayish-yellow, with arrow-shaped bands of brown and white. Some individuals may have a white band on the upper part of their whorls. The interior of the shell is brown. The shell has a maximum length of 33 mm (1.3 inches) and a diameter of 31 mm. The operculum is white and smooth.

Distribution

These snails are found from

Baja California Sur Baja California Sur, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California Sur, is a state in Mexico. It is the 31st and last state to be admitted, in 1974. It is also the second least populated Mexican state and the ninth-largest state by ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

, including the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California (), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Vermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja California peninsula from ...

. This species is also found in the Galapagos Islands. They live in the

intertidal zone The intertidal zone or foreshore is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide; in other words, it is the part of the littoral zone within the tidal range. This area can include several types of habitats with various ...

, down to 3 meters (10 feet) deep, on sand and mud flats.

Life history

This moon snail preys on small

bivalves Bivalvia () or bivalves, in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of aquatic molluscs (marine and freshwater) that have laterally compressed soft bodies enclosed by a calcified exoskeleton consis ...

. It is actively mobile, hunting on soft seabeds for buried clams. It uses an abrasive appendage called a

radula The radula (; : radulae or radulas) is an anatomical structure used by mollusks for feeding, sometimes compared to a tongue. It is a minutely toothed, chitinous ribbon, which is typically used for scraping or cutting food before the food enters ...

to drill into the shells of small clams. Once inside, it secretes digestive fluids and then feeds on the clam slurry that results. There is some evidence that one of the species it preys on is '' Chionista fluctifraga,'' the smooth Venus clam.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q13903776 chemnitzii Gastropods described in 1840