Morphology of sensory papillae on the feeding proboscis of cone snails (Mollusca, Gastropoda)

Cone snails, predatory marine gastropods, have developed a specialized prey capture method in which a long, distensible proboscis is used to identify prey and inject venom via a hydraulically propelled hollow radular tooth. Using brightfield, epifluorescence, confocal, and transmission and scanning...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Invertebrate biology 2014-09, Vol.133 (3), p.221-231
Main Authors: James, David, Prator, Cecilia A, Martin, Gary G, Schulz, Joseph R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cilia
Conus
Electron micrographs
Epithelial cells
Gastropoda
Microvilli
Mollusks
Papillae
prey detection
Proboscis
regeneration
scanning electron microscopy
sensory structures
Snails
Specimens
Venoms
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Summary:Cone snails, predatory marine gastropods, have developed a specialized prey capture method in which a long, distensible proboscis is used to identify prey and inject venom via a hydraulically propelled hollow radular tooth. Using brightfield, epifluorescence, confocal, and transmission and scanning electron microscopy, we describe the morphology of ciliated sensory structures concentrated on the tip of the proboscis. The number and morphology of these sensory papillae are linked to the type of preferred prey: cone snails feeding on worms and mollusks have short, cone or finger‐shaped papillae, whereas fish‐hunting cone snails have long tubular papillae in addition to short conical papillae. Sensory papillae are well positioned to provide information necessary to locate, identify, and dispatch prey. Proboscis tips and their sensory papillae regenerated within 10 d following experimental ablation, and snails with regenerated proboscis tips were able to locate and envenomate prey. The remarkable intrageneric variation found in the morphology of these sensory structures is probably linked to the specialized prey that cone snail species have evolved to hunt.
ISSN:1077-8306
1744-7410
DOI:10.1111/ivb.12058