Tonicia chilensis (Frembly 1827)

Chile Central

Oscabrion élégant

Chiton elegans, l'Oscabrion élégant, est une espèce de mollusques polyplacophores, de l'ordre des Chitonida et de la famille des Chitonidae. Elle a été décrite à partir d'un spécimen de la collection du musée et a été trouvée en Australie (?) (Nouvelle-Hollande , dans le texte).

Cette espèce admet un homonyme, Chiton elegans Frembly, 1827, qui est un synonyme de Tonicia chilensis (Frembly, 1827), une espèce trouvée au Chili.

Animal of medium to large size, reaching 43 mm in examined specimens. Shell elongate-oval, not much elevated, the dorsal ridge rounded, side-slopes straightened. Color umber-brown at the sides, becoming chestnut in the middle, delicately and peculiarly speckled and blotched and streaked with buff or buff-white. Lateral areas hardly raised, but separated from the central areas by an obtuse diagonal ridge bearing a series of low tubercles, sometimes subobsolete; sculptured with subradiating rows of small granules, and showing a band of irregularly placed black eyes on the forward part. Central area of second valve having in the middle, a keel or a group of lirae; central areas of the other valves having a narrow smooth dorsal band with several longitudinal furrows on each side of it; and at the sides there are longitudinal diverging delicate rows of granules. End valves radially sub-granulate, and crowded with eye-spots subradially arranged (After Pilsbry 1893).

According to Reid and Osorio (2000) this species distributes in Chile and Peru between latitudes 12° and 54°S. It has a bathymetric range from 0–28 m (Schwabe et al. 2006).