This is a well known species readily recognized by 1) turreted, straight-sided shell up to 30 mm in height, 2) aperture oblique, with expanded outer lip, distinct adapical notch, very short and twisted abapical canal, 3) sculpture of collabral riblets and 3 spiral bands forming low nodes on crossing the riblets; body whorl with a strong varix on the apertural side, 2 additional weaker spirals just abapical to the periphery and fine threads over the base; brown background with yellowish spiral lines.

DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT. The species is distributed in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, ranging from the Gulf of Oman to Indonesia and northward to Japan and China. Cerithidea cingulala is a lower to midtidal species and occurs commonly in mangrove swamps, living on the mud flat below the mangrove trees (MURTY & RAO, 1977; PLAZIAT, 1984; WELLS, 1985) but climbing the trees with rising tides (MURTY & RAO, 1977); locally, it can be so abundant that 200 to 500 snails per square meter are present (VAN BENTHEM JUTTING, 1956). The species may be also present on sand in some protected bays if mangroves are absent (PURCHON & PURCHON, 1981; WELLS, 1985). BIGGS (1973) pointed out that Cerithidea cingulata is able to flourish in the most extreme conditions: on the Persian Gulf coast, the species is abundant and of large size where the salinity is about 27%o, but in other locations it tolerates a salinity of 42%o although the specimens are somewhat smaller.

FOSSIL RECORDS. Miocene of Japan; Late Miocene of India and Indonesia; Pliocene of India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan; Quaternary of the Indo-Pacific area; Holocene of Thailand.