Cabestana spengleri

Taxobox
name = "Cabestana spengleri"


image_caption =
status =
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Mollusca
classis = Gastropoda
ordo = Sorbeoconcha
familia = Ranellidae
genus = "Cabestana"
species = "C. spengleri"
binomial = "Cabestana spengleri"
binomial_authority = (Perry, 1811)

"Cabestana spengleri", or Spengler's trumpet, is a large predatory sea snail, sometimes called a predatory whelk, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Ranellidae, a family often known as the tritons.

Distribution

This species is endemic to New Zealand and Australia. It is found around all three main New Zealand islands, plus the Chatham and Kermadec islands, and around south east Australia including Tasmania.

Habitat

Among rocks at low water to depths of a few metres.

hell description

The shell is large and solid, often massive, fusiform, with distant heavy rounded varices, rendered strongly dentate at their outer edged by conspicuous heavy spiral cords. The whole surface is crossed by dense axial riblets. The aperture has a free-edged parietal callus, smooth except for a single parietal tubercle, bridging a crescentic false-umbilicus chink. The outer lip is thin-edged and strongly dentate, but backed by a heavy rounded varix, and spirally ridged and dentate within.

The external shell coloration is yellowish-brown, lined with dark chestnut in the incised spiral grooves. The aperture and callus are porcelanous-white, and the periostracum is bright yellowish-brown.

The shell height is up to 125 mm, and the width is up to 70 mm.

Life habits

The egg capsules of this species are massed upon the inner surface of a leathery cup-shaped "nest", about 60 mm in diameter.

References

* Powell A. W. B., "New Zealand Mollusca", William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1979 ISBN 0-00-216906-1
* Glen Pownall, "New Zealand Shells and Shellfish", Seven Seas Publishing Pty Ltd, Wellington, New Zealand 1979 ISBN 85467 054 8