Pagodula echinata Kiener 1840

Pagodula echinata (Kiener, 1840)

Fig. 14 a–c

Fusus echinatus Kiener, 1840 (p. 19, pl. 2, fig. 2).

Trophonopsis (Pagodula) vaginata (De Cr. e Jan)— Di Geronimo & Panetta 1973 (p. 79, pl. 1, fig. 7).

Pagodula vaginata (De Cr. e Jan, 1832)—Sabelli & Spada 1978[b] (p. 1, fig. 3).

Trophon echinatus (Kiener, 1840) — Bouchet & Warén 1985 (p. 137, figs. 308–318, 333, 335–338); Poppe & Goto 1991 (p. 138, pl. 26, figs. 11–12); Giribet & Peñas 1997 (p. 68, figs. 41–42).

Pagodula echinata (Kiener, 1840) — Giannuzzi-Savelli et al. 2003 (pp. 110–112, figs. 202–209); Repetto et al. 2005 (p. 179, top right fig.).

Diagnostic characters. Fusiform shell; adapically angulated whorls; long and widely open siphonal canal; 10–12 commarginal lamellae raised in backward reflexed, fluted spines at whorl angulation; uneven, faint spiral cordlets abapically to the angulation. Protoconch: low conical; 1.75 whorls; diameter about 670 µm; height about 520 µm; first 1.2 whorls spirally microgranulated; subsequent whorls with 1 abapical and 3 adapical spiral lines; transition to the teleoconch marked by a weakly sinuous lip.

Remarks. Pagodula vaginata (De Cristofori & Jan, 1832), sometimes synonymized with the present taxon, is a Pliocene/Pleistocene ancestor of P. echinata that became extinct during the Pleistocene (La Perna 1996).

Occurrence. Box-corer samples BC66 (1 specimen), BC67 (1), BC68 (1), BC72 (13); cores BC05 (2), BC21 (4), BC51 (9), BC72 (1). Maximum height: 13 mm.

Distribution and habitat. Pagodula echinata is distributed from the northeastern Atlantic to the Azores, Morocco and the Mediterranean, also occurring on some Lusitanian seamounts; it dwells on mud bottoms at shelf to bathyal depths (Bouchet & Warén 1985; Poppe & Goto 1991; Beck et al. 2006). It has been reported living (as Trophon vaginata) on Taranto bathyal bottoms, belonging to the Abra-Nucula biocoenosis (Di Geronimo & Panetta 1973). In the Santa Maria di Leuca CWC biotope, it has been reported as a common element of the solitary coral thanatofacies (Rosso et al. 2010).

Fossil record. Pleistocene of southern Italy (Di Geronimo & La Perna 1997; Di Geronimo et al. 2005). Pliocene records actually belong to Pagodula vaginata (cf. Bouchet & Warén 1985; La Perna 1996).