Florida Fighting Conch
Strombus alatus (Gmelin, 1791)
The Florida Fighting Conch is rare on S. Hutchinson Island. Bleow are two juveniles.
Two juvenile Florida Fighting Conchs S. Huchinson (Nov.-Dec. 2020)
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Strombus alatus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Strombus alatus Gmelin, 1791
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Gastropoda
Subclass: Caenogastropoda
Order: Littorinimorpha
Family: Strombidae
Genus: Strombus
Species: S. alatus
Binomial name
Strombus alatus
(Gmelin, 1791)
Synonyms
Strombus crenulatus Röding, 1798
Strombus pyrulatus Lamarck, 1822
Strombus sulcatus Anton, 1838
Strombus dubius Sowerby II, 1842
Strombus undulatus Küster, 1845
Strombus alatus, the Florida fighting conch, is a species of medium-sized, warm-water sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Strombidae, the true conchs.
Distribution
This conch occurs in the Western Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, Texas, and the east coast of Mexico.[1][2]
Description
The shell can be as large as 112 mm (4.4 in).[1][3]
This species is closely similar to Strombus pugilis, the West Indian fighting conch, which has a more southerly range. S. alatus shells have less prominent subsutural spines and slightly more projected outer lips. Some scientists have treated the two as distinct species; others as subspecies.[4] In an extensive study of the Stromboidea in 2005, Simone provisionally treated these as distinct species, but observed, "no spectacular morphological difference was found [and] all related differences, even those of the genital system, can be regarded as extreme of variation of a single, wide distributed, variable species."[5]
Phylogeny
Fossil Strombus alatus
from Caloosahatchee Formation, Sarasota, Florida, USA
A cladogram based on sequences of nuclear histone H3 gene and mitochondrial cytochrome-c oxidase I (COI) gene showing phylogenetic relationships of (32 analyzed) species in the genus Strombus and Lambis, including S. alatus, was proposed by Latiolais et al. (2006):[6]
Strombus gallus
Strombus gigas
Strombus costatus
Strombus raninus
Strombus peruvianus
Strombus galeus
Strombus latus
Strombus pugilis
Strombus alatus
Strombus granulatus
Phylogeny and relationships of Eastern Pacific and Atlantic Strombus species, according to Latiolais et al. (2006)[6]
Habitat
The minimum recorded depth for this species is the surface; the maximum recorded depth is 183 m.[3]
References
"Malacolog ver. 4.1.1". The Academy of Natural Sciences. Retrieved 30 September 2009.
Perry, H.; Larsen, K. (2004). "Strombus alatus Gmelin, 1791 Florida Fighting Conch" (PDF). A Picture Guide to Shelf Invertebrates from the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Retrieved 27 June 2010.
Welch J. J. (2010). "The "Island Rule" and Deep-Sea Gastropods: Re-Examining the Evidence". PLoS ONE 5(1): e8776. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008776.
Simone (2005): Comparative Morphological study of representatives of the three families of Stromboidea and the Xenophoroidea (Mollusca, Caenogastropoda), with an assessment of their phylogeny Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, p. 142.
Simone (2005): Comparative Morphological study of representatives of the three families of Stromboidea and the Xenophoroidea (Mollusca, Caenogastropoda), with an assessment of their phylogeny Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, p. 169.
Latiolais J. M., Taylor M. S., Roy K. & Hellberg M. E. (2006). "A molecular phylogenetic analysis of strombid gastropod morphological diversity". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 41: 436-444. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.05.027. PDF.