Strombus alatus, the Florida fighting conch, is a species of medium-sized, warm-water sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Strombidae, the true conchs. Its name derives two Latin words. Strombus means, in Latin, a snail with spiral shell, which derives from the Greek στρόμβος, meaning anything turned or spun around, like a top or, as in Aristotle's Historia Animalium, a sea snail. Alatus means, in Latin, "winged".
| Strombus alatus | |
|---|---|
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| A Florida fighting conch on a Florida beach | |
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Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| Subclass: | Caenogastropoda |
| Order: | Littorinimorpha |
| Family: | Strombidae |
| Genus: | Strombus |
| Species: | S. alatus |
| Binomial name | |
| Strombus alatus (Gmelin, 1791) | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Distribution
This conch occurs in the Western Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, Texas, and the east coast of Mexico.[1][2]
Description
The shell can be as large as 112 mm (4.4 in).[1][3]
This species is closely similar to Strombus pugilis, the West Indian fighting conch, which has a more southerly range. S. alatus shells have less prominent subsutural spines and slightly more projected outer lips. Some scientists have treated the two as distinct species; others as subspecies.[4] In an extensive study of the Stromboidea in 2005, Simone provisionally treated these as distinct species, but observed, "no spectacular morphological difference was found [and] all related differences, even those of the genital system, can be regarded as extreme of variation of a single, wide distributed, variable species."[5]
Phylogeny
from Caloosahatchee Formation, Sarasota, Florida, USA
A cladogram based on sequences of nuclear histone H3 gene and mitochondrial cytochrome-c oxidase I (COI) gene showing phylogenetic relationships of (32 analyzed) species in the genus Strombus and Lambis, including S. alatus, was proposed by Latiolais et al. (2006):[6]
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| Phylogeny and relationships of Eastern Pacific and Atlantic Strombus species, according to Latiolais et al. (2006)[6] |
Habitat
The minimum recorded depth for this species is the surface; the maximum recorded depth is 183 m.[3]
References
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