Engina mendicaria | |
---|---|
Shell of Engina mendicaria from Tanzania at the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Mollusca |
Class: | Gastropoda |
(unranked): | clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda clade Neogastropoda |
Superfamily: | Buccinoidea |
Family: | Buccinidae |
Subfamily: | Pisaniinae |
Genus: | Engina |
Species: | E. mendicaria |
Binomial name | |
Engina mendicaria (Linnaeus, 1758) |
|
Synonyms | |
|
Engina mendicaria, common name striped engina or bumble bee snail, is a species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Buccinidae, the true whelks.
The shell size varies between 10 mm and 20 mm. This shell shows a white or yellowish background with a few transversal black bands and resembles the yellow and black pattern of wasps and bees (hence a common name).
This species is distributed in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean along Aldabra, Chagos, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, in the tropical Indo-Pacific and Australia.
These carnivore sea snails live on rocky shores and sand beds. They are mainly nocturnal.