''Trivia arctica'', the northern cowrie, 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

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 ...

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 ...

Triviidae Triviidae is a taxonomic family of small sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamily Cypraeoidea of the order Littorinimorpha. MolluscaBase eds. (2020). MolluscaBase. Triviidae Troschel, 1863. Accessed through: World Register of Ma ...

, the trivias. This is a similar species to '' Trivia monacha'' and it often occurs in the same areas. The name ''Trivia'' means "common" and the word ''arctica'' means "of the arctic".

Distribution

This species occurs from the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

to the

Orkney Orkney (), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but locals now consider it outdated. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, ...

north of

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It is more common in the north. In the British Isles the shells are known as "cowries", except in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland where they are called Groatie Buckies. In these areas, the shells are traditionally seen as lucky and can be found in art and jewellery. In the

Isles of Scilly The Isles of Scilly ( ; ) are a small archipelago off the southwestern tip of Cornwall, England. One of the islands, St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, St Agnes, is over farther south than the most southerly point of the Great Britain, British mainla ...

the shell is referred to as a Guinea Money.

Habitat

This species usually lives below low tide, in other words is

sublittoral The littoral zone, also called litoral or nearshore, is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely in ...

, but the empty shells of this species are often washed up onto beaches. In its northern range is found at depths of 100 m and in it southern range at depths up to 1000 m.

Description

The shell is glossy and lemon-shaped, with 20-30 transverse ridges. The upper part of the shell is a uniform very pale brown in color; there are no pigment spots present on the shell, but sometimes there are dots on the mantle of the animal. The shell length is up to a maximum of about 10 mm and a width of about 8 mm. The mantle is covered with many

papilla Papilla (Latin, 'nipple') or papillae may refer to: In animals * Papilla (fish anatomy), in the mouth of fish * Papilla (worms), small bumps on the surface of certain worms * Basilar papilla, a sensory organ of lizards, amphibians and fish * ...

e. It has a light colour in deeper waters, but becomes darker, often red, between tide marks. The foot is light yellow or light orange. The admedian teeth of the

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 ...

have denticles. The

penis A penis (; : penises or penes) is a sex organ through which male and hermaphrodite animals expel semen during copulation (zoology), copulation, and through which male placental mammals and marsupials also Urination, urinate. The term ''pen ...

is flat and broad. The larvae have a light stomach and intestine. In the

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 ...

stage they have a four-lobed ''velum'' (a structure used for swimming and particulate food collection) with very long lobes.

Life habits

This snail lives among and feeds on compound

ascidian Ascidiacea, commonly known as the ascidians or sea squirts, is a paraphyletic class in the subphylum Tunicata of sac-like marine invertebrate filter feeders. Ascidians are characterized by a tough outer test or "tunic" made of the polysaccharid ...

s, including '' Botryllus schlosseri''. They often occur together with ''Trivia monacha''. The breeding season is autumn, winter and early spring. ''T. arctica'' is one of several Cypraeoides that secretes acid when disturbed. It has been suggested that the bright colour of the mantle is intended to warn of this defence.

Note on differentiating the species

Both ''Trivia arctica'' and '' Trivia monacha'' were considered to be two forms of the same species until 1925, when

Alfred James Peile Alfred James Peile (5 August 1868 – 13 July 1948) was a British army officer and amateur malacologist who was an expert on the radulae of gastropods. Life Peile was educated at Cheltenham College and trained at the Royal Military Academy, W ...

published a paper in the '' Proceedings of the Malacological Society'' differentiating the two. It is now known that the larvae of the two species are readily distinguishable. The Linnaean name ''Trivia europea'', now lapsed, referred to the supposed single species.

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

himself mentioned two kinds: ''Cypraea europea'' and ''Cypraea anglica'', but these terms were intended as a geographical distinction, and are not accepted as species names today.

Use as ornaments during the Stone age

Large amount of trivia shell ornaments consisting of ''Trivia arctica'' and '' Trivia monacha'' have been excavated in

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistory, prehistoric period during which Rock (geology), stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended b ...

burial Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

s at

Téviec Téviec or Théviec is an island situated to the west of the isthmus of the peninsula of Quiberon, near Saint-Pierre-Quiberon in Brittany, France. The island is an important archaeological site due to its occupation during the Mesolithic period. M ...

in northwestern France, dating back to c. 5000–7000 BC. They are some of the earliest European examples of false cowrie shells used in necklaces and ornaments, for the most part associated with male skeletons. While the

Trivia Trivia is information and data that are considered to be of little value. Modern usage of the term ''trivia'' dates to the 1960s, when college students introduced question-and-answer contests to their universities. A board game, ''Trivial Purs ...

genus superficially resembles the true ribbed

cowries Cowrie or cowry () is the common name for a group of small to large sea snails in the family Cypraeidae. Cowrie shells have held cultural, economic, and ornamental significance in various cultures. The cowrie was the shell most widely used wo ...

from the tropics, the two species are not closely related. However, these shells are sometimes called ''cowries'' in the British Isles, but are more widely known as ''false cowries''. File:Sépulture de Teviec Global.jpg, Note the existence of a single '' Monetaria annulus'' specimen to the left of the skull File:Sépulture de Teviec (5).jpg, Skeletons with trivia ornaments File:Sépulture de Teviec (2).jpg, Skeletons with trivia ornament

References

Arkive.org : ''Trivia monacha''

Sabella.mba.ac.uk : The_British_species of ''Trivia'' : ''T. arctica''_and ''T. monacha''
* Peile, A.J., 1925, ''The Differentiation as Species of the two forms of British Trivia'', Proc. Malac. Soc. 1925, pp;. 195-198 * P.J. Wayward & J.S. Ryland, ''Handbook of the Marine Fauna of North-West Europe'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, {{Use dmy dates, date=May 2017 Triviidae Gastropods described in 1799