Morphometrics of rock snails Tylothais aculeata (Gastropoda: Muricidae) associated with hard substrates in Ambon Island, Maluku, Indonesia
Muhammad Masrur Islami* and Daniel Josef Tala
Center fo Deep Sea Research, Indonesian Institute of Sciences – LIPI
Jl. Y. Syaranamual, Poka, Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia – 97233
* Email: muha067[at]lipi.go.id
Abstract
Tylothais aculeata is one of the gastropod species member of the family Muricidae, order Neogastropoda. This species plays an important role in the marine macrobenthic community. This study aims to determine the variations and relationships of shell dimension i.e. shell length (SL), shell width (SW), shell height (SH) of T. aculeata associated with the hard substrates in Ambon Island, Maluku. Field sampling was conducted in eight locations, in August 2016, with purposive sampling method in typical hard substrates of chosen coastal areas. A total of 751 individuals were found and divided to sixteen size ranges with three peaks of its size group. The highest and the lowest number of individual was found in Dok Talake (DT) and Gudang Arang (GA), respectively. The highest frequency was 96 individuals on range of 28-30 mm, while the lowest one was only 4 individual on range of 42-44 mm. The characteristics of shell dimension relationship of SL-SW and SL-SH were positive allometry; SW-SH was negative allometry; and SL-TW was positive allometric, respectively.
Keywords: Muricid Tylothais aculeata, morphometrics, hard substrates, Ambon Island
Topic: Marine Resources, Conversation and ICZM