Coralliophilinae (Gastropoda: Muricidae) associated with deep-water coral banks in the Mediterranean

Identifying gastropod spawn from DNA barcodes: possible but not yet practicable.

Identifying life stages of species with complex life histories is problematic as species are often only known and/or described from a single stage. DNA barcoding has been touted as an important tool for linking life-history stages of the same species. To test the current efficacy of DNA barcodes for identifying unknown mollusk life stages, 24 marine gastropod egg capsules were collected off the...

Ahermatypic Coral Banks: Living and Fossil Counterparts

Reef-like structures referred to as banks are produced by framework-building ahermatypic scleractinians in cool water at various depths, usually below those of hermatypic shallow-water reef corals. The distribution of Holocene banks is closely related to the ecological requirements of the ahermatypic corals. Fifteen major regions of bank development are known today in the Atlantic and Pacific a...

Observations on the production of purple pigments in the egg capsules, hypobranchial and reproductive glands from seven species of Muricidae (Gastropoda : Mollusca)

A Vertical Wall Dominated by Acesta excavata and Neopycnodonte zibrowii, Part of an Undersampled Group of Deep-Sea Habitats

We describe a novel biotope at 633 to 762 m depth on a vertical wall in the Whittard Canyon, an extensive canyon system reaching from the shelf to the deep sea on Ireland's continental margin. We explored this wall with an ROV and compiled a photomosaic of the habitat. The assemblage contributing to the biotope was dominated by large limid bivalves, Acesta excavata (mean shell height 10.4 cm), ...

Early Miocene reef- and mudflat-associated gastropods from Makran (SE-Iran)

A new gastropod fauna of Burdigalian (early Miocene) age is described from the Iranian part of Makran. The fauna comprises 19 species and represents three distinct assemblages from turbid water coral reef, shallow subtidal soft-bottom and mangrove-fringed mudflat environments in the northern Indian Ocean. Especially the reef-associated assemblage comprises largely new species. This is explained...