Drupella is a coral-eating marine snail that can be a major predator of corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
Drupella snails feed directly on living coral tissue. When their numbers become unusually high, they can create feeding scars and remove substantial areas of coral from colonies. Outbreaks are therefore monitored as one of the biological pressures affecting reef condition.
Drupella is a genus rather than one single species name. The snails are small gastropod mollusks with patterned shells, and they can be difficult to notice among complex coral branches. Their ecological role is different from that of the crown-of-thorns starfish, another important coral predator.
Not every Drupella snail concentration is an outbreak, and coral loss usually has multiple possible causes. Scientists consider predator abundance alongside storms, disease, warming, pollution, and other local stresses when assessing reef change.