West Indian Fighting Conchs

The West Indian Fighting Conch is the animal I picked for my project this week.  My mom had a conch shell on her desk when I was little, and I was curious about it, so I decided to learn more about conchs.

Taxonomy:
Kingdom Animalia
Phylum Mollusca
Class Gastropoda
Family Strombidae
Genus Strombus
Species pugilis.

Common name: West Indian Fighting Conch.

The West Indian Fighting Conch's maximum length is approximately 110 millimeters, though the average length is more like 90 mm.   Its range stretches from Florida across the Caribbean and all the way down to Brazil. It lives in the intertidal zone and in shallow water up to 10m generally.

It is dioecious, meaning individuals are either male or female.  Another word for this is gonochoric.  West Indian Fighting Conchs have external fertilization.

The conch starts off as a fertilized egg, which divides and becomes a meroplanktonic trochophore larva. Later it moves on to the veliger larval stage. It eventually settles down and start growing its shell. It spends this time burrowed under the sand to avoid predators.  After about four years, the conch is an adult.  It emerges from under the sand, and the cycle continues.

West Indian Fighting Conchs are herbivores, feeding on algae and other plants.
One of their predators is Octopus maya or the Mexican Four-Eyed Octopus. It has neurotoxins which can paralyze its prey, while it drills into the conch's shell.
Another predator is Homo sapiens, who usually cook their prey.  In the Florida Keys, conch fritters are a common dish.

Cool facts:

Key West calls itself "the Conch Republic" and has a conch depicted on its flag.

The reason they are called "fighting conchs" is because if you pick one up, it will jab at you with its sharp, sickle shaped operculum!

Human hunting of conchs is likely driving them to evolve to be smaller so they are less attractive prey.  This is an interesting article about it: humans affect conch evolution article.