Chrysallida


Chrysallida is a speciose genus of minute sea snails, pyramidellid gastropod mollusks or micromollusks in the family Pyramidellidae within the tribe Chrysallidini.

Taxonomy

The genus Folinella had two preoccupied names - Amoura De Folin, 1873 not J.E. Gray 1847, and Funicularia Monterosato, 1884 not Forbes, 1845.
The genus Chrysallida Carpenter, 1856 has been used as a catchall, particularly in the European literature following a lead by Winckworth, for most pyramidellids having both axial and spiral sculpture but having otherwise little in common with the Californian type species C. communis. A statement that this is incorrect was voiced by van Aartsen, Gittenberger & Goud who nevertheless still used Chrysallida as the genus to include many Eastern Atlantic species, distributed into several subgenera. Micali, Nofroni & Perna restored usage of Parthenina Bucquoy, Dautzenberg & Dollfus, 1883 for several species formerly placed in Chrysallida. This move was continued by Høisæter, Peñas, Rolán & Swinnen and Giannuzzi-Savelli et al. who are here followed, but there are still many species remaining unduly under Chrysallida. For these, we have refrained from making new combinations not backed by a published source. Nevertheless, all the species that were already "accepted" under a subgenus, now raised to full genus, have been marked as "accepted" under that full genus.

Distribution

Species within the genus Chrysallida are commonly distributed in all oceans from the tropics to the polar regions, the Arctic and the Antarctic. It is mainly known from coastal areas, and is uncommon in deep elevations such as trenches in the sea.
The members of Chrysallida are ectoparasites on serpulid polychaetes.

Species

There are multiple species within the genus Chrysallida, these include the following in alphabetical order:
The following species were brought into synonymy
Little is known about the ecology of the members of this genus. As is true of most members of the Pyramidellidae sensu lato, they are most likely ectoparasites.