| Drupella rugosa | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): | clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda clade Neogastropoda |
| Superfamily: | Muricoidea |
| Family: | Muricidae |
| Subfamily: | Rapaninae |
| Genus: | Drupella |
| Species: | D. rugosa |
| Binomial name | |
| Drupella rugosa (Born, 1778) |
|
| Synonyms[1] | |
|
|
Drupella rugosa, common name : the rugose drupe, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or rock snails.[1]
Contents |
Drupella rugosa is a creamy white to orange, conical shell with a height between 20 mm and 35 mm. The sculpture shows five spiral rows of rounded brown nodules separated by twelve axial ribs with fine granules, giving the shell a knobby appearance. The columella is narrow and the anal sinus hardly shows. The elliptical aperture is narrowed by protruding plaits. The outer lip is with five or six teeth.
Drupella rugosa grazes on the skeleton of tissue of live corals, especially branching corals such as Acropora pruinosa and Montipora informis, leaving a white scar behind. It has a preference for corals stressed mechanically and in low salinity water. They form feeding aggregations on an individual coral. But their impact is contained as they are rarely present in sufficient numbers to cause the coral population to dwindle. [2]
This species is distributed in the intertidal zone and shallow rocky areas in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean along Aldabra, Chagos, Madagascar, the Mascarene Basin and in the Western Pacific.