Family AGLAJIDAE Pilsbry, 1895

Family Aglajidae. Chelidonura pallida (from Beesley, Ross & Wells 1998) [R. Plant]

Museums

Regional Maps

• Aglajidae Pilsbry, H.A. 1895. Philinidae, Gastropteridae, Aglagidae, Aplysiidae, Oxynoeidae, Runcinidae, Umbraculidae, Pleurobranchidae. Manual of Conchology 1 16.

  Type genus:

   Aglaja Renier, 1807.

Introduction

This family lacks both radula and gastral plates, though there are one or two exceptions. Aglajids are elongate, cylindrical animals, rather soft and flabby with a thin parapodial fold each side of the body. A shell, in some species resembling only the top quarter of a Bulla shell, is enclosed within the hinder part of the visceral mass, though exceptionally it may be partly exposed. Some species have pads of extensile setae each side of the mouth which are used to search out food. Many species have a pair, the left one longer, of fleshy trailing projections behind the animal.

Aglajids are predatory carnivores, actively seeking out their food animals which they ingest whole with their strongly muscular pharynx. Aglajid prey includes acoel, polyclad and poychaete worm, shelled opistobranchs, and other species of the family Aglajidae, even their own species, and nemerteans which are ingested just as a human would suck in a length of spaghetti. Compiled from Burn (in press).

General References

Beesley, P.L., Ross, G.J.B. & Wells, A. (eds) 1998. Mollusca: The Southern Synthesis. Fauna of Australia. Melbourne : CSIRO Publishing Vol. 5(Part B) pp. vi–viii, 565–1234. [953]

Burn, R. 2006. A checklist and bibliography of the Opisthobranchia (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of Victoria and the Bass Strait area, south-eastern Australia. Museum Victoria Science Report 10: 1-42

History of changes