Kingdom Animalia Class Gastropoda | Phylum Mollusca Superfamily Conoidea | |
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Family Turridae
H. Adams & A. Adams, 1853 | ||
Turridae is a taxonomic family name for a number of predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea. The family name Turridae was originally given to a very large group of several thousand sea snail species that were thought to be closely related. However, that original grouping was discovered to be polyphyletic.
Contents
In recent years, the family Turridae has been much reduced in size, because a number of other families were created to contain the monophyletic lineages that had previously been thought to belong in the same family.
The common name "turrids" is still used informally to refer to the polyphyletic group.
Distribution
Species in the family Turridae are found worldwide; most are found in the neritic zone.
Shell description
The shape of the shells is more or less fusiform. The whorls are elongate to broadly conical.
Turrids are carnivorous, predatory gastropods. Most species have a poison gland used with the toxoglossan radula, used to prey on vertebrates and invertebrate animals (mostly polychaete worms) or in self-defense. Some turrids have lost the radula and the poison gland. The radula, when present, has two or three teeth in a row. It lacks lateral teeth and the marginal teeth are of the wishbone or duplex type. The teeth with a duplex form are not shaped from two distinct elements but grow from a flat plate, by thickening at the edges of the teeth and elevation of the rear edge from the membrane.
Female turrids lay their eggs in lens-shaped capsules.
History of the taxonomy
The family Turridae, in the older broadest sense of the group, was in the past perceived as one of the most difficult groups to study because of a large number of supra-specific described taxa, which were complicated by their species diversity. Although some species were relatively common, many were rare, some being known only from single specimens; this is another factor that made studying the group difficult.
According to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005, which attempted to set out a stable taxonomy, this family consisted of the following five subfamilies:
The 2005 classification system for the group was greatly changed by the 2011 publication of an article revising the taxonomy of the superfamily Conoidea, Bouchet P., Kantor Yu.I., Sysoev A. & Puillandre N. (2011) A new operational classification of the Conoidea. Journal of Molluscan Studies 77: 273-308. The authors presented a new classification of the superfamily Conoidea on the genus level, based on anatomical characters but also on the molecular phylogeny as presented by Puillandre N., et al., 2008. The polyphyletic family Turridae was resolved into 13 monophyletic families (containing 358 currently recognized genera and subgenera) :
Current genera
Genera in the family Turridae sensu stricto, now include:
Synonymy
Subfamily ?Strictispirinae McLean, 1971 accepted as Strictispiridae McLean, 1971