Kingdom Animalia Superfamily Cypraeoidea Genus Staphylaea Phylum Mollusca | Class Gastropoda Family Cypraeidae Scientific name Staphylaea nucleus Rank Species | |
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Similar Staphylaea staphylaea, Palmadusta asellus, Pustularia bistrinotata, Luria isabella, Palmadusta ziczac | ||
Staphylaea nucleus, the wrinkled cowry, is a species of sea snail, a cowry, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries.
Contents
There is one subspecies: Staphylaea nucleus madagascariensis (Gmelin, 1791) (synonym : Cypraea madagascariensis Gmelin, 1791) (common name: the wrinkled cowrie). This subspecies is distributed in the Indian Ocean along Kenya, Madagascar and Tanzania.
Description
These quite rare shells reach on average 16–20 millimetres (0.63–0.79 in) length, with a maximum size of 30 millimetres (1.2 in) and a minimum size of 10 millimetres (0.39 in). This shell is oval, the dorsum surface is light orange-brown with a thin longitudinal line in the middle, many small round protuberances and two orange areas at the extremities. The base is light orange and the small teeth are extended to both sides of the entire base. In the living cowries the mantle is brownish, with well-developed papillae.
Distribution
This species is distributed in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean along Aldabra, Chagos, Kenya, Madagascar, the Mascarene Basin, Mauritius, Réunion, the Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania, as well in Western Central Pacific Ocean (Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, Guam and Hawaii).