page_title: Aliger gigas
section_title: Historic illustrations
hierarchical_section_title: Aliger gigas / Anatomy / Shell / Historic illustrations
caption_attribution_description: English: A drawing of a tropic snail Eustrombus gigas (Linnaeus, 1758) Русский: Рисунок тропической улитки Eustrombus gigas (Linnaeus, 1758)
context_page_description: Aliger gigas, originally known as Strombus gigas or more recently as Lobatus gigas, commonly known as the queen conch, is a species of large edible sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the family of true conches, the Strombidae. This species is one of the largest molluscs native to the Caribbean Sea, and tropical northwestern Atlantic, from Bermuda to Brazil, reaching up to 35.2 centimetres in shell length. A. gigas is closely related to the goliath conch, Lobatus goliath, a species endemic to Brazil, as well as the rooster conch, Lobatus gallus.
  The queen conch is herbivorous. It feeds by browsing for plant and algal material growing in the seagrass beds, and scavenging for decaying plant matter. These large sea snails typically reside in seagrass beds, which are sandy plains covered in swaying sea grass and associated with coral reefs, although the exact habitat of this species varies according to developmental age. The adult animal has a very large, solid and heavy shell, with knob-like spines on the shoulder, a flared, thick outer lip, and a characteristic pink or orange aperture.
context_section_description: Index Testarum Conchyliorum (published in 1742 by the Italian physician and malacologist Niccolò Gualtieri) contains three illustrations of adult shells from different perspectives. The knobbed spire and the flaring outer lip, with its somewhat wing-like contour expanding out from the last whorl, is a striking feature of these images. The shells are shown as if balancing on the edge of the lip and/or the apex; this was presumably done for artistic reasons as these shells cannot balance like this.
  One of the most prized shell publications of the 19th century, a series of books titled Illustrations conchyliologiques ou description et figures de toutes les coquilles connues, vivantes et fossiles (published by the French naturalist Jean-Charles Chenu from 1842 to 1853), contains illustrations of both adult and juvenile A. gigas shells and one uncoloured drawing depicting some of the animal's soft parts. Almost forty years later, a colored illustration from the Manual of Conchology (published in 1885 by the American malacologist George Washington Tryon) shows a dorsal view of a small juvenile shell with its typical brown and white patterning.
caption: Adult shell, apical view, Gualtieri, 1742
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