Gastropods · Cephalaspidea · Bullidae

Striate Bubble

Bulla striata

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

A bubble snail with an oval, thin, mottled shell that the animal can barely fit into. It spends the day buried in the sand and comes out at night to feed on algae. It is hermaphroditic and lays its eggs in gelatinous strings attached to marine plants.

Size

2 cm – 5 cm

Diet

Herbivore

Feeds mainly on plants.

Activity

Nocturnal

Active mainly at night.

Social structure

Solitary

Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

OceanHerbivore Nocturnal Solitary Ocean Mollusc

40countries 2dive sites

Fun facts

Its shell has no projecting spire: the final whorl wraps the earlier ones completely and leaves a small pit at the apex.
Its shell is a fragile, globular bubble into which the animal barely fits: the mantle partly envelops it, and the foot is too big to retract fully inside.
It is an opisthobranch, the group that includes the sea hares and the nudibranchs, and it represents an intermediate step in the evolutionary reduction of the shell which in those groups ended in its total disappearance.
It has no operculum, unlike snails with a complete shell.
It grinds algae with a gizzard fitted with calcareous plates, an internal mill that makes up for the lack of powerful jaws.
It is a hermaphrodite and lays its eggs in gelatinous strings tangled in the vegetation.
By day it buries itself in the sand and only betrays its presence by the furrow it leaves as it moves.

Life cycle & biology

Skeleton type: Invertebrate - external calcareous shell (mollusc)
Habitat & environment: Shallow sandy bottoms and seagrass meadows of the warm Atlantic

Sources consulted: Rudman, Sea Slug Forum; Marine Life Information Network; Malaquias y Reid, revisiones de Bullidae