Trivia arctica

Trivia arctica
Three shells of Trivia arctica from North Wales
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Gastropoda
Order:	Sorbeoconcha
Family:	Triviidae
Genus:	Trivia
Subgenus:	Trivia
Species:	T. arctica
Binomial name
Trivia arctica (Pulteney, 1799)
Synonyms
Trivia mollerati (Locard, 1894)

Trivia mollerati (Locard, 1894)

Trivia arctica, the northern cowrie, is a species of small sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Triviidae, the trivias.

This is a similar species to Trivia monacha and often occurs in the same areas.

The name Trivia means "common" and the word arctica means "of the arctic".

This species occurs from the Mediterranean Sea to the Orkney islands north of Scotland and Norway. It is more common in the north.

In the British Isles the shells are known as "cowries", except in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland where they are called Groatie Buckies. In the Isles of Scilly the shell is referred to as a Guinea Money.

This species usually lives below low tide, in other words is sublittoral, but the empty shells of this species are often washed up onto beaches. In its northern range is found at depths of 100 m and in it southern range at depths up to 1000 m.

The shell is glossy and lemon-shaped, with 20-30 transverse ridges. The upper part of the shell is a uniform very pale brown in color; there are no pigment spots present on the shell, but sometimes there are dots on the mantle of the animal.

The shell length is up to a maximum of about 10 mm and a width of about 8 mm.

The mantle is covered with many papillae. It has a light colour in deeper waters, but becomes darker between tide marks. The foot is light yellow or light orange. The admedian teeth of the radula have denticles. The penis is flat and broad.

The larvae have a light stomach and intestine. In the veliger stage they have a four-lobed velum (a structure used for swimming and particulate food collection) with very long lobes.

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Wikipedia