Check mate: Mysterious Moreton Bay periwinkle identified

On Sunday afternoon, I paid a visit to the Brisbane River at Murarrie for an hour. There, I poked about the rocks and stalked the shoreline to see if I could find some periwinkles to identify, and caught up with a species that has puzzled me ever since I found it at Lamb Island (below) a few weeks ago.

It is small, with a pointed apex and distinctive, bold patterning on its shell, and at both localities was found on hard substrates near mangroves.

It reminded me of Littoraria luteola in general shape and colour scheme, but was the wrong size and patterning and utilised a different microhabitat, with luteola being arboreal on mangrove trunks and branches. Below is a luteola that I found at Jacobs Well last year.

Studying my books at home, I realised the answer had been staring me in the face the whole time as Littoraria articulata, the checkerboard periwinkle. The book to solve this for me was Graham Edgar's 'Tropical Marine Life of Australia' (2019), which has quickly become one of my most treasured resources.

Also found was the empty shell of a gold-mouthed conniwink (Bembicium auratum).

Whereas the checkerboard periwinkle is found throughout the Indo-Pacific, from India down to Moreton Bay and all the way up to Japan, the conniwink is an Australian endemic, calling our southern estuaries home. These two species co-occurring in the Brisbane River is an example of how in the subtropics, we get the best of both worlds as far as tropical and temperate ecosystems are concerned.

Comments

Suburb Guide: Underwood

The pastel love flower is a charming, shade-loving native plant. The stretch of highway on the way to the Gold Coast running between Mount Gravatt and Yatala has always been a bit of a vague blur to me at the best of times, and a peak hour nuisance at worst. An endless strip of superstores, car dealerships and fast food outlets, I tend to hurry on through as quickly as the traffic will allow, chasing greener horizons further south. It turns out that the view from the M1 doesn’t really do this area justice though, as I found out recently while exploring the Logan suburb of Underwood.

Suburb Guide: Lawnton

Fan-tailed cuckoos are most often seen on a low branch, keeping an eye-out for caterpillars below. Straddling the lush banks of the North Pine River, Lawnton is a suburb of Moreton Bay Regional Council steeped in history . Originally inhabited by the Turrbal people, the land would have been cloaked for many hundreds of thousands of years by a lowland rainforest ecosystem, featuring the hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) for which the river is named after. Unfortunately, the rich soils allowing the vegetation to thrive also made the place attractive to European settlers that wished to farm the land, leading to great conflict with the Indigenous inhabitants. This was eased temporarily by local pioneering figure Tom Petrie, who had lived with and forged a respectful relationship with the Turrbal people, including Dalaipi, leader of the North Pine tribe. By 1858, however, the Aboriginal people of the area were removed and sent to live in isolated reserves around South-east Queenslan...

Creek Fishing in the Redlands

Hilliards Creek Situated to the south-east of Brisbane, the Redlands shire encompasses many areas of natural beauty, including the Cleveland foreshore and North Stradbroke Island. It is also one of the fastest growing suburban areas in Australia, and would be unrecognisable to those who knew it as a rural outpost just 25 years ago. Despite this surge in development, even the busy suburbs of Wellington Point, Ormiston and Cleveland retain areas of natural bushland set aside to preserve populations of Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) and Squirrel Gliders (Petaurus norfolcensis), from which other forms of wildlife benefit also. On my visit there today, I was interested in looking at how these other creatures are faring, particularly the fish living in Hilliards Creek.

Wild BNE

Search This Blog