Lobatus gigas

Lobatus gigas, originally known as Strombus gigas, commonly known as the queen conch, is a species of large edible sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family of true conches, the Strombidae. This species is one of the largest molluscs native to the Caribbean sea, and tropical northwestern Atlantic, from Bermuda to Brazil, reaching up to 35.2 centimetres (13.9 in) in shell length. L. gigas is closely related to the goliath conch, Lobatus goliath, a species endemic to Brazil, as well as the rooster conch, Lobatus gallus. The queen conch is herbivorous. It feeds by browsing for plant and algal material growing in the seagrass beds, and scavenging for decaying plant matter. These large sea snails typically reside in seagrass beds, which are sandy plains covered in swaying sea grass and associated with coral reefs, although the exact habitat of this species varies according to developmental age. The adult animal has a very large, solid and heavy shell, with knob-like spines on the shoulder, a flared, thick outer lip, and a characteristic pink or orange aperture (opening). The outside of the queen conch is sandy colored, helping them blend in with their surroundings. The flared lip is absent in juveniles; it develops once the snail reaches reproductive age. The thicker the shell's flared lip is, the older the conch is. The external anatomy of the soft parts of L. gigas is similar to that of other snails in the family Strombidae; it has a long snout, two eyestalks with well-developed eyes, additional sensory tentacles, a strong foot and a corneous, sickle-shaped operculum. The shell and soft parts of living L. gigas serve as a home to several different kinds of commensal animals, including slipper snails, porcelain crabs and cardinalfish. Its parasites include coccidians. The queen conch is hunted and eaten by several species of large predatory sea snails, and also by starfish, crustaceans and vertebrates (fish, sea turtles and humans). It is an especially important food source for large predators like sea turtles and nurse sharks. Its shell is sold as a souvenir and used as a decorative object. Historically, Native Americans and indigenous Caribbean peoples used parts of the shell to create various tools. International trade in the Caribbean queen conch is regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) agreement, in which it is listed as Strombus gigas. This species is not endangered in the Caribbean as a whole, but is commercially threatened in numerous areas, largely due to extreme overfishing. The queen conch was originally described from a shell in 1758 by Swedish naturalist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, who originated the system of binomial nomenclature. Linnaeus named the species Strombus gigas, which remained the accepted name for over 200 years. Linnaeus did not mention a specific locality for this species, giving only 'America' as the type locality. The specific name is the ancient Greek word gigas (γίγας), which means 'giant', referring to the large size of this snail compared with almost all other gastropod molluscs. Strombus lucifer, which was considered to be a synonym much later, was also described by Linnaeus in Systema Naturae. In the first half of the 20th century, the type material for the species was thought to have been lost; in other words, the shell on which Linnaeus based his original description and which would very likely have been in his own collection, was apparently missing, which created a problem for taxonomists. To remedy this, in 1941 a neotype of this species was designated by the American malacologists William J. Clench and R. Tucker Abbott. In this case, the neotype was not an actual shell or whole specimen, but a figure from a 1684 book Recreatio mentis, et occuli, published 23 years before Linnaeus was born by the Italian Jesuit scholar Filippo Buonanni (1638–1723). This was the first book that was solely about seashells. In 1953 the Swedish malacologist Nils Hjalmar Odhner searched the Linnaean Collection at Uppsala University and discovered the missing type shell, thereby invalidating Clench and Abbott's neotype designation. Strombidae's taxonomy was extensively revised in the 2000s and a few subgenera, including Eustrombus, were elevated to genus level by some authors. Petuch and Petuch and Roberts recombined this species as Eustrombus gigas, and Landau and collaborators (2008) recombined it as Lobatus gigas. The phylogenetic relationships among the Strombidae were mainly studied by Simone (2005) and Latiolais (2006), using two distinct methods. Simone proposed a cladogram (a tree of descent) based on an extensive morpho-anatomical analysis of representatives of Aporrhaidae, Strombidae, Xenophoridae and Struthiolariidae, which included L. gigas (there referred to as Eustrombus gigas).