Penion

Penion Temporal range: Lower Miocene to Recent
A shell of Penion cuvieranus cuvieranus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Gastropoda
(unranked):	clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda clade Neogastropoda
Superfamily:	Buccinoidea
Family:	Buccinidae
Genus:	Penion Fischer, 1884[1]
Species
See text

Penion is a genus of large sea marine snails, commonly known as siphon whelks, classified within the mollusc family Buccinidae, the true whelks.

Description

Penion species are distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. Two extant species are currently classified in Australia^[2] and five extant species are documented in New Zealand.^[3] Numerous fossil species are recorded in New Zealand.^[4] A molecular phylogeny of Buccinidae based on the complete 16S mitochondrial gene suggested that Penion is a sister clade to Kelletia.^[5]

Species

Species and subspecies in the genus Penion include:

• Penion benthicolus (Dell, 1956)
  • Penion benthicolus delli (Powell, 1971)
• Penion chathamensis (Powell, 1938)
• Penion cuvieranus (Powell, 1927)
  • Penion cuvieranus jeakingsi (Powell, 1947)
• Penion mandarinus (Duclos, P.L., 1831)
  • Penion mandarinus waitei (Hedley, 1903)
• Penion maximus (Tryon, G.W., 1881)
• Penion ormesi (Powell, 1927)
• Penion sulcatus (Lamarck, 1816)

References

1. Fischer (1884). Man. Conch.: 625.
2. Ponder, W.F.. 1973. A review of the Australian species of Penion Fischer (Neogastropoda: Buccinidae). Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 2: 401–428.
3. Powell A. W. B., New Zealand Mollusca, William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1979 ISBN 0-00-216906-1
4. Beu, A.G. and Maxwell, P.A. 1990. Cenozoic Mollusca of New Zealand. New Zealand Geological Survey Bulletin, 58.
5. Hayashi, S. 2005. The molecular phylogeny of the Buccinidae (Caenogastropoda: Neogastropoda) as inferred from the complete mitochondrial 16s rRNA gene sequences of selected representatives. Molluscan Research, 25: 85–98.