''Tibia fusus'', common name Spindle tibia or Shinbone Tibia Gastropod, is a species of large

sea snail Sea snail is a common name for slow-moving marine gastropod molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguished from snails primarily by the ...

, a

marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

mollusk in the family Strombidae, the true conchs.

Distribution

This species is widespread in Eastern Indian Ocean and Western Pacific, from Indochina, China Sea, southern

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and the Philippines to the Banda Sea, Indonesia,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and Oceania.SeaLifeBase:''Tibia fusus'' (Linnaeus, 1758), shinbone tibia.
/ref>Claudio Galli
WMSDB - Worldwide Mollusc Species Data Base
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Habitat

Most ''Tibia fusus'' live in tropical offshore waters where there is plenty of sand, at depths of 5 to 50 m.

Description

The shells of ''Tibia fusus'' can reach a length of (including the long siphonal canal), with a typical length of 23 cm (9 in.). These shells are large, spindle-shaped with moderately convex turns and an extremely long, thin and slightly curved siphonal canal. The basic color ranges from straw yellow to reddish-beige. The aperture is ovate and white inside, with 6 fingerlike growths on the outer lip. It is a fairly common species where it occurs, but because of its attractive appearance, it is highly sought after by shell collectors. File:Tibia-fusus-0002.jpg

Life cycle

Embryos develop into free-swimming planktonic marine larvae ( trochophore) and later into juvenile

veligers 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 tax ...

Bibliography

* Walls, J.G. (1980). Conchs, tibias and harps. A survey of the molluscan families Strombidae and Harpidae. T.F.H. Publications Ltd, Hong Kong. * Koichiro Masuda & CHi-Yue Huang, 1993. Miocene Gastropoda and Scaphopoda in the western foothills of northern Taiwan. Journal of the Geological Society of China (1993) *Springsteen, F.J. & Leobrera, F.M. 1986. Shells of the Philippines

References

External links

Encyclopedia of life

Stromboidea
Rostellariidae Gastropods described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Strombidae-stub