''Onustus caribaeus'' 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 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 ...

Xenophoridae Xenophoridae, common name, commonly called carrier shells, is a family (biology), family of medium-sized to large sea snails, marine (ocean), marine gastropod mollusks in the clade Littorinimorpha. Distribution The Xenophorids live on sand and ...

, the carrier shells.

Description

The anatomy of O. Caribaeus. is very similar to all members of the Xenophoridae family. Their shells have a flat bottom and a short conical spiral on top. They are known for their ability to camouflage by attaching substrates like pebbles, sand, empty shells, and even coral to the top of their shells. The specifics of how this is done are not known. However, we know that these foreign objects are fused to the shells in all different conformations, radially, laterally, or symmetrically as the shell grows. The shells can reach a maximum height of 45 mm, in average 37 mm. The diameter of the base reaches a maximum length of 88 mm, in average 60 mm. The colour of the dorsum is yellowish-white.Kreipl, K. & Alf, A. (1999): ''Recent Xenophoridae''. 148 pp. incl. 28 color plts. ConchBooks, Hackenheim, . Like other snails, O. Caribaeus have a radula, used for scraping detritus and other substances off of substrates to feed on, and a muscular foot used for locomotion.

Distribution

''Onustus caribaeus'' is distributed in the North-eastern

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 ...

, 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 ...

and along the Atlantic coast of

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

between 35m and 640m (mostly deeper than 100m).

References

# Onustus caribaeus (Petit de la Saussaye, 1857). WoRMS (2010). Onustus caribaeus (Petit de la Saussaye, 1857). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species a
http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=468051
on 9 July 2010 . # J. E. MORTON, THE ADAPTATIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS OF THE XENOPHORIDAE (MESOGASTROPODA), Journal of Molluscan Studies, Volume 33, Issue 3, December 1958, Pages 89–101, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.mollus.a064812 # A. G. Beu (1977) New Zealand Cenozoic Gastropods of the genus Xenophora Fischer, 1807, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 7:2, 229-241, # Crippa, Pasinetti, G., & Dapiaggi, M. (2020). How did the carrier shell Xenophora crispa (König, 1825) build its shell? Evidence from the Recent and fossil record. Lethaia, 53(4), 439–451. https://doi.org/10.1111/let.12367 # Feinstein, & Cairns, S. D. (1998). Learning from the collector: A survey of azooxanthellate corals affixed by Xenophora (Gastropoda: Xenophoridae), with an analysis and discussion of attachment patterns. The Nautilus (Philadelphia). # Kreipl, K. & Alf, A. (1999): Recent Xenophoridae. 148 pp. incl. 28 color plts. ConchBooks, Hackenheim, ISBN 3-925919-26-0 # Arquivos de zoologia. (1967). Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo. Xenophoridae Gastropods described in 1857 {{Xenophoridae-stub