Buccinum tsubai is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of sea snail

Sea snail

Sea snail is a common name for those snails that normally live in saltwater, marine gastropod molluscs....

, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Buccinidae

Buccinidae

Buccinidae is a very large and diverse taxonomic family of large sea snails, often known as whelks or true whelks.True whelks are mostly marine gastropod mollusks in the clade Neogastropoda...

, the true whelks.

Description

The size of an adult shell varies between 50 mm and 85 mm. This species has a thin shell with inflated whorls

Whorl (mollusc)

A whorl is a single, complete 360° revolution or turn in the spiral growth of a mollusc shell. A spiral configuration of the shell is found in of numerous gastropods, but it is also found in shelled cephalopods including Nautilus, Spirula and the large extinct subclass of cephalopods known as the...

 and an oval to oblong, wide aperture

Aperture (mollusc)

The aperture is an opening in certain kinds of mollusc shells: it is the main opening of the shell, where part of the body of the animal emerges for locomotion, feeding, etc....

. Across the surface run a large number of very fine, reticulate threads. The outer lip is not thick.

The Tsubai whelk shows sexual dimorphism, but it is not clear whether the female is larger than the male as is the case in most Buccinum species.

Distribution

This deep-sea marine species can be found in depths between 200 m and 1,000 m in the Japan Sea along Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

.

External links

• Akira IGUCHI, Masahiro UENO, Tsuneo MAEDA, Takashi MINAMI, Isao Hayashi , Genetic population structure of the deep-sea whelk Buccinum tsubai in the Japan Sea, Fisheries Science (2004) Volume: 70, Issue: 4, Pages: 569-572
• Chinzei, K., 1973: Omma-Manganjian molluscan fauna in the Futatsui area of northern Akita, Japan. Transactions and Proceedings of the Palaeontological Society of Japan. New Series, no. 90, pp. 81–94, pl. 14