A lot of misc. snails! Safe or whelk?

[beepboop]

Got these from my LFS when I asked for small snails to clean my macroalgae… Any advice on whether they’re safe or whelks? They were basically free.

@ISpeakForTheSeas you seem to be super knowledgable on this topic - any advice?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Got these from my LFS when I asked for small snails to clean my macroalgae… Any advice on whether they’re safe or whelks? They were basically free.

@ISpeakForTheSeas you seem to be super knowledgable on this topic - any advice?

Thanks in advance!

The Lettered/Dotted Dove Snail, Euplica scripta - they're good:

Euplica scripta is apparently primarily a sea grass-epiphytic algae-eater;* so it feeds primarily on algae that grows on sea grass; interestingly, this makes them (and a few other common Columbellids) quite different dietarily than the vast majority of their relatives.**

Cool!

*Source:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X21002727 **Source:

Molecular phylogeny of Columbellidae (Gastropoda: Neogastropoda) - PMC

The neogastropod family Columbellidae is a highly successful group of small, primarily epibenthic marine snails distributed worldwide and most abundant in the tropics. The great diversity of the group makes them attractive for studying evolutionary ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[BristleWormHater]

The Lettered/Dotted Dove Snail, Euplica scripta - they're good:

Beat me to it!

 

[beepboop]

Oh that’s excellent! Thank you both so much for the quick responses. I got nervous when I noticed some of the trunks look tattooed - can’t that be a whelk sign?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Oh that’s excellent! Thank you both so much for the quick responses. I got nervous when I noticed some of the trunks look tattooed - can’t that be a whelk sign?

Yeah, Dove snails are from the taxonomic family Columbellidae, which is from the whelk taxonomic superfamily, Buccinoidea - they and Nassarius snails are a couple of exceptions to the generally predatory nature of the superfamily.

Edit: So, they look like whelks because they arguably are whelks (Nassarius snails are sometimes called Dog Whelks or Mud Whelks) - at the least, they are definitely closely related to whelks.