Turridae


Turridae is a taxonomic family name for a number of predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea.
The family name Turridae was originally given to a very large group of several thousand sea snail species that were thought to be closely related. The family was described with about 700 genus-group taxa and an estimated 10,000 recent and fossil species. However, that original grouping was discovered to be polyphyletic.
In recent years, the family Turridae has been much reduced in size, because a number of other families were created to contain the monophyletic lineages that had previously been thought to belong in the same family.
The common name turrids is still used informally to refer to the polyphyletic group.

Distribution

Species in the family Turridae are found worldwide; most are found in the neritic zone. It is a major component of the Indo-Pacific molluscan fauna.

Shell description

The shape of the narrow shells is more or less fusiform. The whorls are elongate to broadly spindle-shaped and conical. The shells are generally small, their length usually smaller than 150 mm. The sculpture is variable. The shell shows strong ribs and spiral ridges. The aperture is long and narrow, with a siphonal canal and an anal sinus.
Turrids are carnivorous, predatory gastropods. Most species have a poison gland used with the toxoglossan radula, used to prey on vertebrates and invertebrate animals or in self-defense. Some turrids have lost the radula and the poison gland. The radula, when present, has two or three teeth in a row. It lacks lateral teeth and the marginal teeth are of the wishbone or duplex type. The teeth with a duplex form are not shaped from two distinct elements but grow from a flat plate, by thickening at the edges of the teeth and elevation of the rear edge from the membrane.
Female turrids lay their eggs in lens-shaped capsules.

History of the taxonomy

The family Turridae, in the older broadest sense of the group, was in the past perceived as one of the most difficult groups to study because of a large number of supra-specific described taxa, which were complicated by their species diversity.
This led to an outcry by Melvill & Standen in 1901:
Although some species were relatively common, many were rare, some being known only from single specimens; this is another factor that made studying the group difficult. Turridiae was in this sense a heterogenous family that contained, more or less, all conoideans not included in the Conidae and Terebridae. Most of this was based on radula and shell characters. Taylor et al. tried to rely more on anatomical characters and moved several subfamilies from Turridae to Conidae.
;2005 taxonomy
According to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005, which attempted to set out a stable taxonomy, this family consisted of the following five subfamilies:
;2011 taxonomy
The 2005 classification system for the group was greatly changed by the 2011 publication of an article revising the taxonomy of the superfamily Conoidea, The authors presented a new classification of the superfamily Conoidea on the genus level, based on anatomical characters but also on the molecular phylogeny as presented by Puillandre N., et al., 2008. The polyphyletic family Turridae was resolved into 13 monophyletic families
;2024 taxonomy:
The family was redescribed again with a generic revision in 2024 by Kantor, Y., Bouchet, P., Fedosov, A., Puillandre, N. & Zaharias, P, containing now 252 species.

Current genera

Genera in the family Turridae sensu stricto, include according to WoRMS:
Image:Polystira albida 2013 000.JPG| thumb|Polystira albidaAlisigemmula Kantor, Bouchet, Fedosov, Puillandre & Zaharias, 2024Anisogemmula Kantor, Bouchet, Fedosov, Puillandre & Zaharias, 2024Annulaturris A. W. B. Powell, 1966
Subfamily Strictispirinae McLean, 1971 : synonym of Strictispiridae McLean, 1971, synonym of Pseudomelatomidae Morrison, 1966