| Triviella ovulata baby's toes |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): | clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda clade Littorinimorpha |
| Superfamily: | Velutinoidea |
| Family: | Triviidae |
| Genus: | Triviella |
| Species: | T. ovulata |
| Binomial name | |
| Triviella ovulata (Lamarck, 1810) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Trivia ovulata (Lamarck, 1811) |
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Triviella ovulata, common name baby's toes, is a species of small sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Triviidae, the trivias.
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This snail is known around the South African coast from the Cape Peninsula to Coffee Bay in 8-30 m. It is endemic.[1]
Triviella ovulata has a plump round white to deep pink shell, which is usually completely covered with the white mantle, which is variably spotted with black.[2] It reaches a maximum size of 40 mm.
This snail is usually found among colonial ascidians, on which it feeds. The snail first drills a hole in the wall of the colony, then eats its fill and finally lays its capsule-shaped egg cases in the resulting cavity. The black-spotted form of this animal resembles Mandela's nudibranch, Mandelia mirocornata, which may cause fish predators to avoid it.