Brachycythara biconica

Brachycythara biconica
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Gastropoda
Clade:	Caenogastropoda
Clade:	Hypsogastropoda
Clade:	Neogastropoda
Superfamily:	Conoidea
Family:	Mangeliidae
Genus:	Brachycythara
Species:	B. biconica
Binomial name
	Brachycythara biconica; (C. B. Adams, 1850)
Synonyms [1]
	Mangelia biconicaAdams C. B., 1850; Mangelia (Brachycythara) biconica(Adams C. B., 1850);

Last updated March 16, 2019

Brachycythara biconica, common name the biconic top turrid, is a species of very small sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Mangeliidae.^[1]

Sea snail is a common name for snails that normally live in salt water, in other words marine gastropods. The taxonomic class Gastropoda also includes snails that live in other habitats, such as land snails and freshwater snails. Many species of sea snails are edible and exploited as food sources by humans.

Family is one of the eight major hierarcical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy; it is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as being the "walnut family".

Mangeliidae is a monophyletic family of small to medium-sized, predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea.

Description

The length of the shell varies between 4 mm and 6 mm.

(Original description) The shell has a biconic shape. Its color is whitish, with a narrow spiral band of brown at the summit of the whorls, which is darker between the ribs, and a similar wider band a little anterior to the periphery of the body whorl (or some specimens may be described as pale brown, with a spiral band of white on the periphery of the whorls, and as white anteriorly). The shell shows strong transverse rounded ribs, about nine on each whorl, and excessively fine spiral rather distant raised lines, which are obsolete on the summits of the ribs. The protoconch is acute. The spire has the outlines nearly rectilinear. It contains six whorls, subangular, with a moderately impressed suture. The aperture is narrow. The outer lip is often much thickened by the last rib. The sinus is near the upper extremity of the outer lip, rather large in old shells. The siphonal canal is short.^[2]

A whorl is a single, complete 360° revolution or turn in the spiral growth of a mollusc shell. A spiral configuration of the shell is found in of numerous gastropods, but it is also found in shelled cephalopods including Nautilus, Spirula and the large extinct subclass of cephalopods known as the ammonites.

The body whorl is part of the morphology of the shell in those gastropod mollusks that possess a coiled shell. The term is also sometimes used in a similar way to describe the shell of a cephalopod mollusk.

A protoconch is an embryonic or larval shell which occurs in some classes of molluscs, e.g., the initial chamber of an ammonite or the larval shell of a gastropod. In older texts it is also called "nucleus". The protoconch may sometimes consist of several whorls, but when this is the case, the whorls show no growth lines.

Distribution

B. biconica can be found in Atlantic waters, ranging from the coast of North Carolina south to Brazil.;^[3] in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Lesser Antilles.

North Carolina is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west, Virginia to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. North Carolina is the 28th-most extensive and the 9th-most populous of the U.S. states. The state is divided into 100 counties. The capital is Raleigh, which along with Durham and Chapel Hill is home to the largest research park in the United States. The most populous municipality is Charlotte, which is the second-largest banking center in the United States after New York City.

Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers and with over 208 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the fifth most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and its most populated city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states, the Federal District, and the 5,570 municipalities. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas; it is also one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world.

The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and south west, to the north by the Greater Antilles starting with Cuba, to the east by the Lesser Antilles, and to the south by the north coast of South America.

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References

1 2 Brachycythara biconica (C. B. Adams, 1850) . Retrieved through: World Register of Marine Species on 8 August 2011.
↑ Adams, C. B. 1850. Description of supposed new species of marine shells which inhabit Jamaica. Contributions to Conchology, 4: 56-68, 109-123
↑ Tunnell, John W., Jr., Felder, Darryl L., & Earle, Sylvia A., eds. Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota, Volume 1: Biodiversity. Texas A&M University Press, 2009. 666.

Clench & Turner, 1950. The Western Atlantic marine mollusks described by C. B. Adams.
Rolán E. & Espinosa J. (1999). El complejo Brachycythara biconica (C. B. Adams, 1850) (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Turridae) en Cuba, con la descripción de una nueva especie. Bollettino Malacologico, 34(1-4): 43-49
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

Tucker, J.K. 2004 Catalog of recent and fossil turrids (Mollusca: Gastropoda). Zootaxa 682:1-1295.
"Brachycythara biconica biconica". Gastropods.com. Retrieved 15 January 2019.
MNHN, Paris: Brachycythara biconica

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[WoRMS-1] 1 2 Brachycythara biconica (C. B. Adams, 1850) . Retrieved through: World Register of Marine Species on 8 August 2011.

[2] Adams, C. B. 1850. Description of supposed new species of marine shells which inhabit Jamaica. Contributions to Conchology, 4: 56-68, 109-123

[3] Tunnell, John W., Jr., Felder, Darryl L., & Earle, Sylvia A., eds. Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota, Volume 1: Biodiversity. Texas A&M University Press, 2009. 666.