Another example is the conch pearl ( sometimes referred to simply as the ' pink pearl '), which is found very rarely growing between the mantle and the shell of the queen conch or pink conch, Strombus gigas, a large sea snail or marine gastropod from the Caribbean Sea.

* Almost all genera of hermit crabs use or " wear " empty marine gastropod shells throughout their lifespan, in order to protect their soft abdomens, and in order to have a strong shell to withdraw into if attacked by a predator.

Each individual hermit crab is forced to find another gastropod shell on a regular basis, whenever it grows too large for the one it is currently using.

Use of gastropod shell s, specifically cowries, in traditional dress of the Kikuyu people of Kenya, Africa.

A very large outdoor sculpture at Akkulam of a gastropod seashell is a reference to the sacred chank shell Turbinella pyrum of India.

This tube resembles, and can be confused with, the shell of marine gastropod mollusks in the family Vermetidae, the worm snails.

A recently-discovered modern gastropod that lives near deep-sea hydrothermal vents illustrates the influence of both ancient and modern local chemical environments: its shell is made of aragonite, which is found in some of the earliest fossil mollusks ; but it also has armor plates on the sides of its foot, and these are mineralized with the iron sulfides pyrite and greigite, which had never previously been found in any metazoan but whose ingredients are emitted in large quantities by the vents.

Perhaps the first animals to use a naturally-occurring " artificial exoskeleton " were the hermit crabs, the majority of which are obliged constantly to " wear " an empty gastropod shell, in order to protect their soft abdomens.

Two gastropod shell | shells of Bolinus brandaris, also known as the Spiny dye-murex

Note that much of this anatomy does not apply to gastropods in other clades. Light yellow-bodyBrown-Gastropod shell | shell and Operculum ( gastropod ) | operculum Green-digestive systemLight purple-gills Yellow-osphradium Red-heartPink-Dark violet-1. foot 2. cerebral ganglion 3. pneumostome 4. upper commissura 5. osphradium 6. gills 7. pleural ganglion 8. atrium of heart 9. visceral ganglion 10. ventricle 11. foot 12.

The larval shell of a gastropod is called a protoconch.

Gastropod shell | The shell of Zonitoides nitidus, a small land snail, has dextral coiling, which is typical ( but not universal ) in gastropod shells.

Broken gastropod shell | shells of Grove snail s on an ' anvil '

The term is now applied to several groups of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks that have no shell or only a very reduced shell, including the nudibranchs.

Most of the 1100 species possess an asymmetrical abdomen which is concealed in an empty gastropod shell that is carried around by the hermit crab.

alt = Underwater photo of a hermit crab and gastropod shell

A shankha shell ( the shell of a Turbinella pyrum, a species in the gastropod family Turbinellidae ) is often referred to in the West as a conch shell, or a chank shell.

Image: PlatyceratidMississippian. JPG | Crinoid calyx from the Lower Carboniferous of Ohio with a conical platyceratid gastropod ( Palaeocapulus acutirostre ) attached.

* Aporodoris of Taringa ( gastropod ) | Taringa in family Discodorididae

Hexactinellid sponge on a Xenophoridae | xenophorid gastropod.

Seashells hand picked from beach drift in North Wales at Shell Island ( Wales ) | Shell Island near Harlech Castle, Wales, bivalve s and gastropod s, March / April 1985

Operculum ( gastropod ) | operculum 13. brain 14. mouth 15. tentacle ( chemosensory, 2 or 4 ) 16. eye 17. penis ( everted, normally internal ) 18. esophageal nerve ring 19. pedal ganglion 20. lower commissura 21. vas deferens 22. pallial cavity / Mantle ( mollusc ) | mantle cavity / respiratory cavity 23. parietal ganglion 24. anus 25. hepatopancreas 26. gonad 27. rectum 28. nephridium

Dorsal view of a gastropod shell | shell of Haliotis cracherodii

Three views of a gastropod shell | shell of a Harpa species, a prosobranch gastropod.

9-hour-old trochophore of the marine gastropod Haliotis asinina sf-gastropod shell | shell field

File: Cypraea chinensis with partially extended mantle. jpg | The marine gastropod Cypraea chinensis, the Chinese cowry, showing partially extended mantle.

Three views of a gastropod shell | shell of Norelona pyrenaica with the apertural view in the center

Photo of dorsal view of internal gastropod shell | shell.

Apertural view of the gastropod shell | shell of adult Tarebia granifera showing its pale brown body whorl and dark spire ( mollusc ) | spire.

In this example a gastropod shell | shell with 3¾ whorls is shown, with the fourth whorl expanding more rapidly than whorls 1-3.

File: Haliotis asinina. jpg | The shell of the marine gastropod Haliotis asinina has less than two whorls

Apertural view of the gastropod shell | shell of adult Tarebia granifera showing its pale brown body whorl and dark spire.

X-ray image of the gastropod shell | shell of Charonia lampas

The Pompeii worm was found in the 1980s, and a scaly-foot gastropod in 2001 during an expedition to the Indian Ocean's Kairei hydrothermal vent field.

In the case of some other marine gastropod shells, such as the volute and the Nassarius pictured above, the shell has a simple " siphonal notch " at the anterior edge of the aperture instead of a long siphonal canal.

Certain species of gastropod seashells ( the shells of sea snails ) can sometimes be common, washed up on sandy beaches, and also on beaches that are surrounded by rocky marine habitat.

The brominated indole indigo dye is produced by a medium-sized predatory sea snail, the marine gastropod Murex brandaris.

In addition soft sediments tend to accumulate on seamounts, which are typically populated by polychaetes ( annelid marine worms ) oligochaetes ( microdrile worms ), and gastropod mollusks ( sea slugs ).

However, this " rotation hypothesis " is being challenged by the " asymmetry hypothesis " in which the gastropod mantle cavity originated from one side only of a bilateral set of mantle cavities.

On the other hand, the docoglossan gastropod radula allows a very similar diet to the polyplacophora, feeding primarily on these resistant algae, although microalgae are also consumed by species with these radular types.

Modern research hypothesizes instead — based on the presence of mollusc and gastropod shells and foraminifera — that the site was buried by ocean waters resulting from repeated tsunamis.

Other examples of the unique fauna who inhabit this ecosystem are scaly-foot gastropod Crysomallon squamiferum, a species of snail with a foot reinforced by scales made of iron and organic materials, and the Pompeii Worm Alvinella pompejana, which is capable of withstanding temperatures up to 80 ° C ( 176 ° F ).

* A very subtle case of ecotype is the following: It has been observed that two populations of the same Helix ( gastropod ) species separated by a only few hundred kilometers prefer not to cross-mate, i. e. they reject one another as mates.

Molluscicides (), also known as snail baits and snail pellets, are pesticides against molluscs, which are usually used in agriculture or gardening, in order to to control gastropod pests specifically slugs and snails which damage crops or other valued plants by feeding on them.

In one other version of current gastropod taxonomy, three of these genera are grouped by themselves in a small subfamily called Haustrinae.

The results suggest that Baculites fed on pelagic zooplankton ( as suggested by remains of a larval gastropod and a pelagic isopod inside the mouth ).

A pearl is formed when the mantle tissue is injured by a parasite, an attack of a fish or another event that damages the external fragile rim of the shell of a mollusk shell bivalve or gastropod.

* Argus ( described by Bohadsch in 1761 ): a gastropod genus in the family Discodoridae

The escalation hypothesis put forward by Geerat Vermeij speaks of more general conflicts and was originally based on his work with marine gastropod fossils.

Like hermit crabs, they inhabit empty gastropod shells, but can be told apart from hermit crabs by the lack of a carapace, revealing the segmentation of the thorax, and by the greater number of legs: hermit crabs have five pairs of legs, of which the first has large claws, and the last is highly reduced, while in Pagurapseudidae, there is one pair of claws, plus six further walking legs.

* Olivella ( gastropod ), used as a currency by indigenous peoples of California

The clade Littorinimorpha contains many of the gastropod families formerly placed in the order Mesogastropoda, as introduced by J. Thiele in his work from 1921.