The “Taiwanese Delphinula” is a very attractive angariid ranging from Japan to Taiwan to Philippines to Vietnam to Malaysia. An extremely variable species in both form and colouration, especially with regards to spine formation.

The most characteristic form has very wide and irregular downward-pointing spines like the depicted specimen resulting in dramatic shape as there may be as little as three spines covering the entire whorl. It is however also capable of producing regularly interspaced upward-pointing spines with variable lengths like most angariids, almost unbelievable that these are all forms of one single species.

Regarding colouration, it often carry distinctive bands of red and white but may also be green and red or uniformly red; even golden specimens have been reported.

It is often confused with Angaria nodosa (Reeve, 1843), another irregular and variable species, but may be distinguished by the sculpture. A. formosa has only very fine spiral cords while A. nodosa has generally stronger and wider cords; the cords of A. nodosa also almost always carry some dark pigments resulting in dark dotted lines running across the whole shell including umbilical region, this is not the case in vast majority of A. formosa.

An algae-grazing gastropod inhabiting hard substrata of shallow water around -5~35m in depth, it is a rather uncommon species. Typical shell length around 40mm, very large specimens may exceed 60mm – Description from Prof. Chong Chen

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