Ovatipsa chinensis
species of mollusc
Ovatipsa chinensis common name the Chinese cowrie, is a species of cowry, a sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries.
Description
The mantle of the animal is bright red, and it is completely covered by protruding short filaments. The shells of this species reach 25–50 millimetres (0.98–1.97 in) of length. The shells are smooth and elongate, light brown or yellowish in color with clear dots on the dorsum and a flat white base. With the subspecies variolaria (Lamarck, 1810), the basic color of the shell is light brown, with slight purple spots on the edges.
Distribution and habitat
This species is found throughout the Indian Ocean and in the Central Pacific Ocean, in seas along Red Sea, East Africa, Australia, Indonesia and Philippines, in intertidal waters at 35–45 metres (115–148 ft) of depth . The Chinese cowry is active at night and hides under rocks in cracks and crevices during the day.
Subspecies
The following subspecies have been recognized :
Ovatipsa chinensis amiges (Melvill and Standen, 1915)
Ovatipsa chinensis chinensis (Gmelin, 1791)
Ovatipsa chinensis somaliana Lorenz, 1999
Ovatipsa chinensis variolaria (Lamarck, 1810)
Ovatipsa chinensis violacea (Rous, 1905)
References
Copley, H. (1945). List of cowries collected on the Kenyan coast by Colonel Maxwell and friends during July, 1944. JEANHS XVII (83&84): 160
Verdcourt, B. (1954).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ovatipsa chinensis” as species of mollusc. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ovatipsa chinensis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.