Lettered Olive: Family Olividae

Lettered Olive
Americoliva sayana (Ravenel, 1834)
Family Olividae


The Lettered Olive is common on the beach where I live. It's easy to find the shell but it's not easy to find Lettered Olives with the top complete and not washed out or broken. Other beaches in my area have significantly less Lettered Olives.


Lettered Olives: From my beach on S. Hutchinson Island, December 2020

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Family Olividae
Americoliva sayana
(Ravenel, 1834)
Lettered Olive

Shell size to 65 mm; shell thick, cylindrical, with highly polished surface. Spire short. Sutures deeply incised. Aperture elongate and narrow, with notch at base. Color light-tan to light gray with darker brown, tentlike markings. Golden-yellow color variety (“citrina”) seldom found off Sanibel. Previously included in the genus Oliva. The photo of a live lettered olive was taken by Amy Tripp on Marco Island, 2011. The shell on the right is a teratological lettered olive with a very long spire, collected on December 2013, on Tarpon Bay Beach, Sanibel, by the Deb and Greg Longtin. A similar specimen was found by Museum volunteer Leroy Neitzel in May 2015 on along West Gulf Drive, also on Sanibel.

The Lettered Olive

The Lettered Olive, Oliva sayana Ravenel, 1834, is a relatively common species on the beaches and sand flats of Southwest Florida. Despite its relative abundance, it is a desirable, collectible species, certainly because of its glossy, colorful shell, and its assorted variations. The locally famous Golden Olive is nothing but a varietal of the species in which the shell lacks darker pigments. Lettered Olives feed on marine worms, crustaceans, small bivalves, among other prey items. They are fast-moving snails (as hinted at in the image on the right), using the anterior, plow-like part of their foot to dig effectively in the soft sand. [This species is now included in the genus Americoliva.]


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Lettered olive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientific classification
Kingdom:     Animalia
Phylum:     Mollusca
Class:     Gastropoda
Subclass:     Caenogastropoda
Order:     Neogastropoda
Family:     Olividae
Subfamily:     Olivinae
Genus:     Americoliva
Species:     A. sayana
Binomial name
Americoliva sayana
(Ravenel, 1834)
Synonyms[1][2]

    Oliva citrina C. W. Johnson, 1911
    Oliva contoyensis Petuch, 1988
    Oliva litterata Lamarck, 1811
    Oliva maya Petuch & Sargent, 1986
    Oliva sayana Ravenel, 1834
    Strephona litterata (Lamarck, 1811)

The lettered olive, Americoliva sayana, is a species of large predatory sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Olividae, the olive shells, olive snails, or olives.[3] It is sometimes referred to as Oliva sayana.[1]

Subspecies
As of April 2010, the lettered olive contains the following accepted subspecies:[4]

    Oliva sayana sarasotensis Petuch & Sargent, 1986
    Oliva sayana sayana Ravenel, 1834
    Oliva sayana texana Petuch & Sargent, 1986

Distribution

The species' range is from North Carolina to Florida, the Gulf states of North America, including Louisiana and Texas; and further south to the east coast of Mexico, including Campeche State, Yucatán State and Quintana Roo.[2][5] It may also occur in Brazil.[citation needed]
Habitat

The lettered olive typically lives in near-shore waters, on shallow sand flats near inlets. The empty shell is occasionally, or sometimes commonly, washed up onto ocean beaches.[citation needed]
Fossil specimen from the Pliocene
Shells
Shells
Shell description

The shell of this species can be about 6 cm (2 1⁄4 in) long (maximum reported size reaches 9.1 cm[2]). It is a smooth, shiny, cylindrical-shaped shell with a short spire. The aperture is narrow and extending almost the length of shell, continuing around the bottom and ending in a notch on the other side. The suture is V-cut and deep. The lower part of the whorl is just above where the suture extends outward and then at a sharp shoulder drops into the suture.

The shell coloration can vary from cream to a greyish exterior with reddish-brown zigzag markings. The common name of this species is derived from the darker surface markings that sometimes resemble letters.
Life habits

Like all olives, the lettered olive is a carnivore: it captures bivalves and small crustaceans with its foot and takes them below the sand surface to digest.[6]

Its presence is sometimes detected at very low tides by the trails it leaves when it crawls below the surface on semi-exposed sand flats.[6]

Females lay floating, round egg capsules that are often found in beach drift. Young are free swimming.[6]
Human use

Colonists and early Native Americans made jewelry from these shells.[6]

The lettered olive is the state shell of South Carolina.[6]
References

Bieler R, Bouchet P, Gofas S, Marshall B, Rosenberg G, La Perna R, Neubauer TA, Sartori AF, Schneider S, Vos C, ter Poorten JJ, Taylor J, Dijkstra H, Finn J, Bank R, Neubert E, Moretzsohn F, Faber M, Houart R, Picton B, Garcia-Alvarez O, eds. (2018). "Americoliva sayana (Ravenel, 1834)". MolluscaBase. World Register of Marine Species. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
Malacolog 4.1.1: Western Atlantic Mollusk Species Database. Retrieved April 2010.
Hardy, Eddie. "Oliva (Americoliva) sayana". www.gastropods.com. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
Oliva sayana Ravenel, 1834. Retrieved through: World Register of Marine Species on 26 April 2010.
"Observations of Americolivia sayana, Research Grade". iNaturalist.org. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
Lettered Olive, NC Sea Grant


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