Ebala nitidissima (Montagu, 1803)
S. Norway to Angola, Azores to W. Mediterranean.
Ectoparasit in the sandy infralittoral.
Original taxon: Turbo nitidissimus.
Beach drift, Leucate, Occitania, S. France. 1,8mm.
Original pictures provided by S. Clanzig (FR).
(CC BY-NC-SA)
Shell aciculate, slightly translucent. Protoconch sinistral, made of two planorbiform whorls that coil along an axis set at right angle to that of the teleoconch. This one glossy, made of 6-8 convex whorls, separated from each other by a well marked sutural groove, and adorned with thin spiral striae crossed by even thinner wavy growth lines. Aperture somewhat oval, a little angular adapically. Umbilicus reduced to a minute slit, or absent. No tooth on the columella.
2-3m deep, Málaga, Andalucia, S. Spain. 3mm.
Microsculpture: thin spirals crossed by rare weak radials.
The frontier between protoconch and teleoconch in a specimen from Sanna Bay, Àird nam Murchan, S. Highland, W. Scotland.
A specimen from western Ireland: Dog’s Bay, near Roundstone, County Galway. 1,7mm. The shell of this species can be more or less slender, the spirals more or less visible, which can make it difficult to differentiate nitidissima from pointeli.

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