What is the Queen Conch Diet?
Queen Conch (Strombus gigas) is a marine snail found in the warm tropical and subtropical waters of the Florida Keys, Bahamas, Virgin Islands and other Caribbean seas. Harvested for their meat and shells, the queen conch's population has struggled to survive in the 2000s. The destruction of seagrass beds is another threat to the queen conch as the algae growing on seagrass provides the bulk of its diet.
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Larvae Diet
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According to the Nature Foundation St. Maarten, the larvae of the queen conch spends approximately 18 to 40 days floating and feeding on plankton before undergoing metamorphosis into its adult form.
Adult diet
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Conchs eat sea grass, algae, and floating organic debris. Matthew M. James, in an article titled "Queen Conch (Strombus gigas)" on The Cephalopod Page, states that the queen conch consumes several species of algae associated with turtle grass, such as Cladophora sp. and Polysiphonia sp. It does not eat the turtle grass itself.
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How They Eat
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A queen conch may pass over 400 feet of seagrass in a night. It eats through a "radula" which is a rough tongue-like organ covered in thousands of "denticles" or tiny sensory protrusions.
How They Digest
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The queen conch's cellulose-laden diet is difficult to digest, so the conch's digestive system utilizes a "crystalline style." Shiro Horiuchi and Charles E. Lane of the Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Miami describe it as a gelatinous translucent rod composed of a microprotein gel that emits digestive enzymes.
Conch Farm Feeding
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Farming of the queen conch helps preserve wild populations. The world's first large-scale commercial conch farm operates in the Caicos Islands. Caicos Conch Farm feeds the algae Chaetocerous sp. to its queen conch larvae. After metamorphosis, the young conchs are fed daily with an artificial diet consisting of catfish chow, sea lettuce, and an alginate binder.
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References
- Photo Credit large conch seashell image by Mike & Valerie Miller from Fotolia.com
