The “Teramachi’s Slit Shell” is a brilliantly lustrous pleurotomariid ranging from Honshu, Japan to Taiwan to South China Sea. It is characterised by the golden surface with a metallic sheen, as well as numerous fine but strongly and regularly beaded spiral lirae. The delicately beaded sculpture is more or less consistent among specimens. The shell form, on the contrary, is quite variable especially the spire profile.

It was previously considered a Western Pacific subspecies of Bayerotrochus africanus (Tomlin, 1948) but today it is widely accepted as a full species in its own right. Indeed, it is rather similar to many Indo-Pacific Bayerotrochus species including B. africanus but also others such as B. westralis (Whitehead, 1987) and B. philpoppei Anseeuw, Poppe & Goto, 2006; these may form a species complex but genetic data required for further insights is currently lacking.

It was once a rare species and commanded high prices, but since deep-water trawlers in Japan and Taiwan started bringing large quantities to surface, its price has plummeted – even more so after the Chinese trawlers started doing the same. It is now the second most common pleurotomariid on the shell trade market, after Mikadotrochus hirasei (Pilsbry, 1903).

A carnivorous grazer feeding mostly on sponges, it inhabits sandy bottoms of rather deep water around -200~600m. Typical shell diameter around 100mm, extremely large specimens may exceed 140mm.

Its name honours the late Mr. Akibumi Teramachi, who is widely accepted as the greatest Japanese collector of the time. Teramachi was a painter who lived in Kyoto, and after he passed away his collection was bequeathed to Toba Aquarium on the condition of permanent storage. This included the holotype specimen of B. teramachi, which still resides in the Toba Aquarium Collection today. Since then Toba Aquarium has become famous for its affliation with shell collecting and continues to have a shell dealer department today. – Adapted from Chong Chen’s post

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