>Hi Andrew,
>         Your thoughts are correct.  In the past nine years I have had in
>our marine tank a Forreria belcheri (Muricidae) and have watched it grow.
>As a species with both a labial tooth and spines they grow in small
>increments.  While the labial tooth is absent at times, the animal does not
>eat but when the tooth begins to appear he/she becomes voracious.  When we
>first got "Hungry", as my wife calls him/her, he ate every bivalve in
>sight, from small Donax gouldi from the beach to  Mahogany Clams from the
>market.  After about a month of constant eating, he would slow down and
>rest until a new tooth had formed and he had grown another few millimeters.
>Looking clsely at the shell you can see many incremental growth lines on
>the shell.
>Dan Yoshimoto

Hi Dan

Some would consider the varices of forreria and trophonines as not
true varices, but I'd beg to differ.

Your observations are interesting, that is, the animal's fasting
whilst the tooth is absent. The implication is that F. belcheri
depends entirely on the labral tooth for feeding. I'd have expected
it to eat gastropods or bore clams betweentimes, but it looksa s
though you've looked at this carefully. Have you pased this on to the
relevant workers? You may well be the only one who has kept the
species under observation.

Beautiful shells, too!
--
Regards
Andrew