Mitrella margarita
Encyclopedia
Mitrella margarita, common name rice shells, Hawaiian name laiki, is a species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of small sea snail
Snail
Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

, a marine
Marine (ocean)
Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...

 gastropod mollusk in the family Columbellidae
Columbellidae
Columbellidae, common name the "dove snails" or "dove shells" are a family of minute to small sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the clade Neogastropoda.-Distribution:...

, the dove snails. The shells of this species are used to make Lei
Lei
Lei may refer to:* Lei, the plural form of Leu, the name of two currencies. See Romanian leu and Moldovan leu* Lei , a Hawaiian flower necklace* Lei , a Chinese name* Lei, Italy, a town in Sardinia...

s in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

.
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