| Erosaria erosa | |
|---|---|
| Living Erosaria erosa, anterior part is to the left | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): | clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda clade Littorinimorpha |
| Superfamily: | Cypraeoidea |
| Family: | Cypraeidae |
| Genus: | Erosaria |
| Species: | E. erosa |
| Binomial name | |
| Erosaria erosa (Linnaeus, 1758) |
|
| Synonyms[1] | |
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Cypraea erosa Linnaeus, 1758 (basionym) |
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Erosaria erosa, common name : the Gnawed or eroded cowry, is a species of sea snail, a cowry, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries.[1]
Contents |
These quite common shells reach on average 32–38 millimetres (1.3–1.5 in) of length, with a maximum size of 75 millimetres (3.0 in) and a minimum size of 15 millimetres (0.59 in). The dorsum is yellow-ocher or pale brown, with many small white spots. The extremities show a dark brown spots. A dark brown areas roughly rectangular are present on both sides close to the edges. The base is white to light beige, with thin trasversal stripes. At night in the living cowries the extremely papillose brownish mantle usually cover completely the shell, granting the camouflage.
This species and its subspecies are distributed in the Indian Ocean along Aldabra, Chagos, the Comores, the East Coast of South Africa, Kenya, Madagascar, the Mascarene Basin, Mauritius, Mozambique, Réunion, the Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania, as well in the Western Pacific Ocean (Malaysia, Australia, Philippines, Polynesia and Hawaii).
These cowries live in warm tropical waters, on shallow intertidal reef or in lagoons at about 2–10 metres (6 ft 7 in–32 ft 10 in) of depth. As they fear dailight, during the day they usually hide under rocks slabs with the mantle drawn into the shell, feeding only at dawn or dusk
There are three subspecies recognized :[1]