Cimaria

• Main Author: Høisaeter, Tore
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2012
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Taxonomy; Animalia; Mollusca; Gastropoda; Pyramidellidae; Cimaria; North East Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5689067; http://treatment.plazi.org/id/038587B47E51651E848797AA3446FCC1

Cimaria sp. (Fig. 3 C) In addition to the material from Costa Rica, a single worn shell was found in a sample from a mangrove creek in Macau, 5°05'S, 36°30'W, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil (ZMBN 87911). This shell may or may not belong to the same species as the ones from Costa Rica, and is here called Cimaria sp. Cimaria vargasi is characterized by an unusually thick shell with a pitted surface, unknown among pyramidellids described to date. Representatives of the genus Adelactaeon Cossmann, 1895, have spiral grooves with pits along their bottom (see van Aartsen et al. 1998). Of the known pyramidellids from the tropical eastern Pacific, Egila poppei Dall & Bartsch, 1909 is perhaps the one most similar to the new species. An unnamed species from the west coast of southern Mexico have axial sculpture above the periphery and pits below, and is thus intermediate in sculpture between Egila poppei and Cimaria vargasi (Patrick LaFolette, pers. comm.) Seven specimens were collected alive, but could unfortunately not be observed alive, or properly preserved for description of the soft parts. The eyes are exceptionally close-set, however, even for a pyramidellid, and are thus reminiscent of Odostomia lukisi Jeffreys, 1848, from the north-east Atlantic. There are not many further clues available as to its closest relatives among pyramidellids. The shell characters, however, seems to rule out any close relationship to any so far described tropical, west American species. The thick shell and the very prominent columellar tooth indicates a placement within the subfamily Odostomiinae. The microhabitat of the new species is unknown. The different frequency of the new species in the five samples from Punta Morales, does not eliminate any of several possibilities. The most parsimonious conclusion is that the species lives in a narrow zone close to the beach, maybe on the borderline between the beach dominated by coarse shell debris and the mud flat proper. Much coarse shell debris was present in the sample with 16 shells ...