Trivia monacha
| Trivia monacha | |
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| Adult Trivia monacha shells hand-picked from beachdrift, from near Aberffraw, Anglesey. Scale is in cm. | |
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| Species: | T. monacha
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| Binomial name | |
| Trivia monacha (da Costa, 1778)
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Trivia monacha, also known as the European cowrie or spotted cowrie, is a species of small sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family Triviidae, the trivias.
The name Trivia means "common" and the word monacha means "solitary".
It is worth comparing this species with the similar species Trivia arctica.
Shell description
The shell of this species is glossy and lemon-shaped, with 20-30 transverse ridges. The upper part of the shell is a reddish-brown with three characteristic darker spots in mature individuals. Juvenile shells are all white.
The shell length is up to a maximum of about 15 mm.
Distribution
This species occurs from the Mediterranean Sea to the Orkney islands north of Scotland.
Habitat
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.
Feeding habits
This snail feeds on sea squirts and compound ascidians.
Note on differentiating the species
Trivia monacha is sometimes confused with Trivia arctica. In fact they were considered to be two forms of the same species until 1925, when A. J. Peile published a paper in the Proceedings of the Malacological Society differentiating the two.
It is now known that the larvae of the two species are readily distinguishable.
The Linnaean name Trivia europea, now lapsed, referred to the supposed single species. Linnaeus himself mentioned two kinds: Cypraea europea and Cypraea anglica, but these terms were intended as a geographical distinction and are not accepted as species names today.