The clams that sail the seas on rafts of kelp

On October 19, 2018October 19, 2018 By Dan KillamIn Biology, clams3 Comments

The streamlined shells of *Gaimardia trapesina*. Source: New Zealand Mollusca

Bivalves are not known as champion migrators. While scallops can swim and many types of bivalves can burrow, most bivalves are primarily sessile (non-moving on the ocean bottom). So for many bivalves, the primary method they use to colonize new territories is to release planktotrophic (“plankton-eating”) larvae, which can be carried to new places by currents and feed on other plankton surrounding them. Many bivalves have broad distributions because of their ability to hitchhike on ocean currents when they are microscopic. They don’t even pack a lunch, instead eating whatever other plankton is around them. But once they settle to grow, they are typically fixed in place.

Not all bivalves have a planktotrophic larval stage, though. Larvae of lecithotrophic bivalve species (“yolk-eaters”) have yolk-filled eggs which provide them with a package of nutrition to help them along to adulthood. Others are brooders, meaning that rather than releasing eggs and sperm into the water column to fertilize externally, they instead internally develop the embryos of their young to release to the local area when they are more fully developed. This strategy has some benefits. Brooders invest more energy into the success of their offspring and therefore may exhibit a higher survival rate than other bivalves that release their young as plankton to be carried by the sea-winds. This is analogous to the benefits that K-strategist vertebrate animals like elephants have compared to r-strategist mice: each baby is more work, and more risky, but is more likely to survive to carry your genes to the next generation.

Brooding is particularly useful at high latitudes, where the supply of phytoplankton that is the staple food of most planktrophic bivalve larvae is seasonal and may limit their ability to survive in large numbers. But most of these brooding bivalves stay comparatively local compared to their planktonic brethren. Their gene flow is lower on average as a result, with greater diversity in genetic makeup between populations of different regions. And generally, their species ranges are more constricted as a result of their limited ability to distribute themselves.

gtrap2 — A bunch of *G. trapesina* attached to kelp. Notice the hitchhiking clams have in turn had hitchhiking barnacles attach to them. Freeloaders on freeloaders! Source: Eleonora Puccinelli

But some brooding bivalves have developed a tool to have it all: they nurture their young and colonize new territories by sailing the seas using kelp rafts. The clam Gaimardia trapesina has evolved to attach itself to giant kelp using long, stringy, elastic byssal threads and a sticky foot which helps it hold on for dear life. The kelp floats with the help of gas-filled pneumatocysts, and grows in the surge zone where it often is ripped apart or dislodged by the waves to be carried away by the tides and currents. This means that if the clam can persist through that wave-tossed interval to make it into the current, it can be carried far away. Though they are brooders, they are distributed across a broad circumpolar swathe of the Southern Ocean through the help of their their rafting ability. They nurture their embryos on specialized filaments in their bodies and release them to coat the surfaces of their small floating kelp worlds. The Southern Ocean is continuously swirling around the pole due to the dominance of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which serves as a constant conveyor belt transporting G. trapesina across the southern seas. So while G. trapesina live packed in on small rafts, they can travel to faraway coastlines using this skill.

pic_w-msc-197185 — The broad circumpolar distribution of *G. trapesina*. Source: Sealifebase

The biology of G. trapesina was described in greater detail in a recent paper from a team of South African researchers led by Dr. Eleonora Puccinelli, who found that the clams have evolved to not bite the hands (kelp blades?) that feed them. Tests of the isotopic composition of the clams’ tissue shows that most of their diet is made up of detritus (loose suspended particles of organic matter) rather than kelp. If the clams ate the kelp, they would be destroying their rafts, but they are gifted with a continuous supply of new food floating by as they sail from coast to coast across the Antarctic and South American shores. But they can’t be picky when they’re floating in the open sea, and instead eat whatever decaying matter they encounter.

shell-gaimardia-trapesina — Falkland Islands stamp featuring *G. trapesina*. Source.

The clams are small, around 1 cm in size, to reduce drag and allow for greater populations to share the same limited space of kelp. Their long, thin byssal threads regrow quickly if they are torn, which is a useful skill when their home is constantly being torn by waves and scavengers. Unlike other bivalves, their shells are thin and fragile and they do not really “clam up” their shells when handled. They prioritize most of their energy into reproduction and staying stuck to their rafts, and surrender to the predators that may eat them. There are many species that rely on G. trapesina as a food source at sea, particularly traveling seabirds, which descend to pick them off of kelp floating far from land. In that way, these sailing clams serve as an important piece of the food chain in the southernmost seas of our planet, providing an energy source for birds during their migrations to and from the shores of the Southern continents.

Killer Clams

On July 22, 2018July 22, 2018 By Dan KillamIn Biology, clams1 Comment

Some shells of the carnivorous genus *Cardiomya*. Notice the protuberance off one side, making space for the overdeveloped siphon they use to capture prey (Machado et al. 2016)

You might think of clams as rather pacifistic creatures. Most of them are; the majority of bivalves are filter-feeding organisms that suck in seawater and eat the yummy stuff being carried by the currents. This mostly means phytoplankton, tiny single-celled photosynthetic plankton which make up most of the biomass in the world’s oceans. Most bivalves could be considered exclusively herbivorous, but as I’ve learned happens throughout evolutionary biology, there are exceptions to every rule. We already talked about parasitic bivalves that have evolved to hitch a ride on other hapless marine animals. But there is an even more sinister lineage of bivalves waiting in the sediment: yes, I’m talking about killer clams.

View of the oversized siphon (Machado et al. 2016)

Carnivory in bivalves has evolved multiple times, but the majority of known carnivorous bivalves fall within an order called the Anomalodesmata. Within that order, two families of clams called the Poromyidae and Cuspariidae have a surprising number of species which are known to eat multicellular prey.

Screenshot_2018-07-22 Clams.png — Evil clams are also the star of my favorite Spongebob episode

Now, you can rest easy because there are no clams that eat people. You’re safe from the Class Bivalvia, as far as we know. But if you were a small crustacean like a copepod, isopod or ostracod, you would be quite concerned about the possibility of being eaten by a poromyid clam in certain regions of the world. These clams lie in wait in the sediment like a sarlacc, with sensory tentacles feeling for passing prey and a large, overdeveloped siphon ready to suck up or engulf their helpless targets.

Until we catch the feeding behavior of poromyids on video, these whimsical artist’s depictions will have to do (Morton 1981).

Because they spend their lives under the sediment, these clams aren’t very well studied, and the first video of them alive was only taken in recent years. In addition, many of these killer clams live in deeper water, where their murderous lifestyle provides an advantage because food supplies can be much more sparse than in the sun-drenched shallow coastal zone. Much like the venus flytrap and carnivorous plants have arisen in response to the low nutrient supply of boggy swamp environments, the ability to eat alternative prey is valuable to the killer clams in all sorts of unconventional environments.

The siphon which these clams use to suck up their prey is a repurposed organ. In most other bivalves, the siphon is usually a snorkel-like organ which enables the clam to safely remain buried deep in the sediment and still breathe in oxgyen and food-rich water from open water above. But for the poromyids, the siphon is instead a weapon which can be used like a vaccum cleaner hose, or even be enlarged to engulf hapless prey. The poromyids have also evolved to have a much more complex, muscular stomach than any other bivalves. It takes a lot more energy to digest multicellular food, while most other bivalves simply just feed from the single-celled food they catch on their gills, expelling the other un-needed junk as “pseudofeces.”

*Dilemma*, another strange carnivorous bivalve which eats marine isopods (pill bugs), found from deep waters off the the Florida Keys, Vanuatu and New Zealand (Leal 2008)

Hopefully soon we will have video of this predatory activity in action. But until then, you can imagine that somewhere on earth, tiny copepods foraging on the surface of the sediment pass by a strange field of squishy tentacles. Suddenly, out of nowhere a hellish giant vacuum hose appears in view and sucks them in like Jonah and the whale. Then it’s just darkness and stomach acid. What a way to go!

*Lyonsiella* going after a doomed copepod (Morton 1984).

Weird Clam Profile: Hammer Oysters

On July 1, 2018July 2, 2018 By Dan KillamIn Biology, clams1 Comment

naturalis_biodiversity_center_-_zma-moll-1264_-_malleus_malleus_28linnaeus2c_175829_-_malleidae_-_mollusc_shell — *Malleus malleus* from Indonesia. Source: Wikipedia

Oyster. Reading that word, you probably formed an image in your mind of a rough-shelled creature with a shiny mother-of-pearl (nacreous) inside that someone pulled out of some silt in an estuary. And yes, that’s what most oysters look like. Some oysters are of additional economic value through their creation of pearls. These pearl oysters have long, straight hinge lines and live in the tropics in and around coral reefs.

4880314958_03e3a2b85c_o — A pearl oyster. See the straight hinge? Source: Pearl Paradise on Flickr

The hammer oysters are another sort of oyster, not of the Ostreidae family that includes most of the bivalves we think of as oysters, but still closely related and in its own family, the Malleidae. Malleus is the latin word for hammer, and the most distinctive genus of hammer oysters indeed look just like a hammer sitting on the seafloor.

73494_orig — In a typical life position in a seagrass bed. Notice all the algae, anemones and other encrusting creatures freeloading off the hammer oyster’s hard work. Source: Ria Tan on EOL

What the…that thing’s alive? How does that even work? This is an oyster? That’s how I imagine the first scientist to discover the hammer oyster reacting. Because they are weird and rather incomprehensible-looking. But when you know the way they live, it makes more sense.

maleus_albus — There is a small area of nacre (mother of pearl) in the area near the rear of the interior. Source: Archerd Shell Collection

The hammerhead part of the oyster is just a super elongated hinge. The creature has a long, straight hinge like other oysters, but it has evolved to instead have a relatively narrow set of valves attached to that ridiculously overbuilt hinge. Like other oysters, they secrete byssal threads from their backside to attach themselves to the bottom. The narrow valves commonly poke up out of sandy bottoms in tropical waters nearby coral reefs. They do particularly well in seagrass beds, and often live in large colonies similar to other oysters.

hammer-oyster-with-natural-attachment-seashell — Shell collectors seek out hammer oyster shells which have other bivalves attached. Here is a thorny oyster living on top of *Malleus*. Two for one! Source

The absurd hinge helps these creatures to stay anchored into the sediment, but also serves as “wings” that help it avoid sinking into the sediment over time. One thing us humans don’t realize sitting on sand is that it actually acts like a liquid. Over time, if we sat on wet sand, we would likely begin to sink in unless we spread out our arms and legs to increase our surface area. In the ocean, all sand is quicksand. Different organisms have different strategies to avoid being engulfed by the sediment they live on, and the hammer oyster has had good success with its strategy. It doesn’t care that you think it looks weird. It just sits there, filtering water for passing food particles and plankton. It’s very good at it, has been perfecting the strategy for over 250 million years, and doesn’t need your smartass remarks, thank you very much.

original — Another shot of a happy hammer oyster doing what it does best, in a seagrass bed near Singapore. Source: Wild Singapore on iNaturalist

When a clam gets an offer it can’t refuse

On May 21, 2018May 21, 2018 By Dan KillamIn Biology, clams2 Comments

I study the giant clams, bivalves which can grow over three feet long and and are willingly “infected” by a symbiotic algae which they house in an altered stomach cavity. They provide their algae partners with nitrogen, a stable environment and even funnel light in their direction, and the algae happily share the fruit of their labor in the form of sugars. Imagine yourself swallowing algae, storing it in your gut and developing windows in your flesh to let light into your stomach. You’d never have to eat again. This is the growth hack that enables the giant clams to grow to unusual sizes. But it turns out that this lovely, beautiful partnership may not have started so peacefully. The algae may have made an offer the clam couldn’t refuse.

Top left: normal mussel. Top right: heavily infected L-shaped shell opening. Bottom: view of an algae-infected mussel, including close up of pearls. From Zuykov et al. 2018

A team from University of Quebec recently discussed what such a fresh infection looks like in mussels and it ain’t pretty. The mussels basically have their shells and bodies overgrown by parasitic Coccomyxa algae, leaving its flesh bright green and transforming its shell from the classic elongated, acute angled margin typical of Mytilus mussels into a strange L-shaped overhang. The more algae are present in the mussel, the more extreme this deformity becomes. The researchers propose that this is no accident, but that as they move in, the algae also manipulates the biochemical pathway that the mussel uses to create its shell.

Mussels, like all bivalves, create their shells by laying down calcium carbonate in layers at the outer edge of the shell. The calcium is sourced from salts in the water column and the carbon primarily comes from carbonate ions also available in the water. This reaction is easier when the pH of the clam’s internal fluid is higher (less acidic), and that is exactly what the algae may assist with. Algae like all plants take in carbon dioxide to use in photosynthesis, and in doing so they increase the pH of the mussel’s body fluid,

The authors note that the region of shell which experiences abnormal thickening in the infected mussels is also the most exposed to light. The Coccomyxa algae may be causing runaway calcification of shell in the regions that they infect, and even may be directly assisting with the calcification in an additional way through the action of an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase, which is used in both their photosynthesis and in shell production (I won’t get into the nitty gritty of that reaction here). But the calcification of the mussels does appear to be in overdrive, as infected mussels were also observed to make pearls!

The algae’s photosynthesis may be assisting the mussel’s shell formation, though overall these are still quite unhealthy organisms of lower weight than their uninfected brethren. Still, Coccomyxa is known to form symbioses with lichens and mosses, so it could be that with enough generations of collaboration and a bit of evolution, the harmful algal infection could become a much more mutually beneficial partnership. It’s not so far fetched to imagine that an ancestor of today’s giant clams got a bad case of gastritis and decided to make the best of a bad situation. Making a deal with their invaders, they became greater than the sum of their parts and evolved to be the giant hyper-calcifiers we know today.

Hard shells aren’t actually that hard to make (yet)

On October 3, 2017October 3, 2017 By Dan KillamIn Biology, clamsLeave a comment

antarctic20soft-shelled20clam20-20laternula20elliptica20001 — One of the Antarctic bivalve species featured in this study. Source

Like all organisms, bivalves have a limited budget governing all aspects of their metabolism. If they put more energy into feeding (filtering the water), they can bring in a bit more food and therefore fuel more growth, but sucking in water takes energy as well, particularly if there isn’t enough food to be filtered out. Bivalves also periodically have to grow gonadal material and eggs for reproduction, expand their body tissue (somatic growth) and of course, grow their shells (made of of a mineral called carbonate). All of these expenditures are items in a budget determined by the amount of energy the bivalve can bring in, as well as how efficiently they can digest and metabolize that energy.

If a bivalve is placed under stress, their scope for growth (the max amount of size increase per unit time) will be decreased. Because they’re cold-blooded, bivalves are limited by the temperature of their environment. If temperatures are low, they simply can’t sustain the chemical reactions required for life at the same rate that endotherms like us can. They also may have to shut their shells and stop feeding if they’re exposed by the tide, or are tossed around by a violent storm, or attacked by predators or toxins from the algae that they feed on.

When their budget is lower, they have to make painful cuts, much like a company lays off employees if their revenues are lower. The question is which biological processes get cut, and when? My first chapter (submitted and in review) has settled temperature being the primary control on seasonal shell growth. Bivalves at high latitudes undergo annual winter shutdowns in growth, which create the growth bands I use to figure out their age, growth rate, etc. We’d be a lot closer to accurately predicting when bivalves suffer from “growth shutdowns” if we had hard numbers on how much energy they actually invest in their shells. A new study from a team led by Sue-Ann Watson of James Cook University attempts to do just that.

laternulagrowth-700 — Diagram relating the growth bands of Antarctic soft-shelled clam with a chart showing the widths of those bands. Source

Collecting a database of widths for the annual growth rings of bivalve and gastropod (snail) species from many latitudes, Watson and her team were able to get a global view of how fast different molluscs grow from the equator to the poles. Because the unit cost of creating carbonate is determined by well-understood chemistry, they were able to create an equation which would determine the exact number of Joules of energy used for every bivalve to grow their shells.

They still needed a total energy budget for each species, in order to the percent of the energy budget that each bivalve was investing in their shells. They drew on a previous paper which had calculated the standard metabolic rates for each species by carefully measuring their oxygen consumption. We could do the same for you if you sat in a sealed box for an extended period of time while we measured the exact amount of oxygen going in and CO2 going out. Dividing the amount of energy needed to grow the shell by the total amount of energy used in the organism’s metabolism would give us a percent of total energy that the bivalve dedicates to adding growth layers to its shell.

That number is…not very large. None of the bivalves or gastropods they looked at put more than 10% of their energy into shell growth, and bivalves were the lowest, with less than 4% of their energy going into their shell. Low-latitude (more equatorward) bivalves have the easiest time, putting less than 1% of their energy into growth but getting way more payoff for that small expenditure. High-latitude polar bivalves have to work harder, because the lower temperatures they experience mean the reactions needed to create their shells are more expensive. In addition, most of that energy is going into the protein-based “scaffolding” that is used to make the shell, rather than the crystals of carbonate themselves. Organisms right now don’t have to put a whole lot of effort into making their protective shells, which could explain why so many organisms use shells for protection. That is good, because if shells were already breaking the bank when it came to the bivalves’ growth budget, they wouldn’t have a lot of room to invest more energy in the face of climate change. Unfortunately, as the authors note, these budgets may need to change in the face of climate change, particularly for bivalves at the poles. As the oceans grow more acidic due to human CO2 emissions, growing their shells will start to take up more of their energy, which is currently not a major part of their budget.

A cold-water ecosystem dominated by Antarctic scallops. Source

Right now, the cold waters of the poles are refuges for organisms that don’t deal well with shell crushing predators. As polar regions warm, such predators will begin to colonize these unfamiliar waters. Polar bivalves may encounter the double whammy of needing to spend more energy to make the same amount of shell, but also find that it is no longer enough to protect them from predators that easily crack open their protective coverings.

I found this study to be an elegant and thoughtful attempt to fill in a gap in our current understanding of how organisms grow and how energy budgets are influenced by environmental variables like temperature. I instantly downloaded the paper because it answered a question that has long been on my mind. Maybe can sneak its way into my manuscript during the review process!

You are Isotopes (Part III)

On August 30, 2017August 30, 2017 By Dan KillamIn Biology, ChemistryLeave a comment

This is the third part of a series about isotopes and why they’re useful and interesting to scientists.

Isotopes are the flavors of elements. And because our universe is made up of atoms of elements, every object can be thought of as a delicious smoothie of flavors. Scientists like me are trying to reverse engineer those mixtures and pick out individual tastes, in order to answer questions about our world.

For example, I work with giant clams. These guys build enormous shells made of a mineral called calcium carbonate: CaCO₃. That means that every molecule in a clam’s shell contains a calcium atom, a carbon and three oxygens. But as you might know from reading the previous entries in this series, not all of those atoms are the same. They are a mixture of different flavors. We have some carbon-12 and 13 in there (so named for their atomic weights), and some oxygen-16, 17 and 18. Here I’m focusing on the stable isotopes, which are not radioactive and are called “stable” because they’re not going to self-destruct. There are radioactive isotopes in there too, but I don’t use those nearly as often in my work.

calcium-carbonate-powder-1291396 — Officer, this is a pile of giant clam powder, I swear!

I am measuring stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen in my shell samples. To do this, I take a sample of powder, grind it up, weigh it, and put it into tiny little cups. We only need a very small sample: about 50 micrograms of shell material. A typical pill of tylenol contains over 300 mg of active ingredient, so about 6,000 of my samples will fit in a single tylenol regular strength pill, if you suddenly decided you needed a giant clam prescription.

deflect — Simplified representation of what’s happening in a mass spec. Source

This tiny sample is one of thirty that I can measure at a time. Those samples are reacted with acid and the CO2 gas that is released as a result of the reaction can be processed by a machine called a mass spectrometer. The mass spec, which is in the Stable Isotope Laboratory in my building, ionizes the molecules in that gas (gives them a bit of electric charge) and then those ions are flung through an electromagnetic field. That beam of charged gas is flung around a curve. That curve is where the magic of making a mass spectrum happens.

Think of the atoms in the CO2 gas from my sample as a bunch of racecars exiting the straightaway and starting around the curve on the racetrack. Only these racecars vary in weights. And the race organizers have greased the track at the curve so that they fling into the sides of the track when they try to turn. As the racecars fling into the sides of the track, they will separate according to their mass. The lighter cars will be able to make it further around the curve before they meet their demise because they have less inertia forcing them forward, whereas the SUVs in the race will barrel forward straight into the sides of the track. At the end, you have a spectrum of racecars poking out of the walls of the track, with SUVs first, then the coupes, then the compact cars and then the motorcycles, which almost made it around the bend, but not quite. Atoms in the mass spectrometer act the same way, and we measure how many collisions happen along each point of the bend in order to not only “weigh” the sample of gas, but also figure out how many molecules of each weight there are!

It turns out that it is quite difficult to measure the exact number of atoms of a particular isotope in gas, however. It is much more economical and feasible for the purposes of most researchers to simply compare our mass spectrum to the results from a standard. Much like there is a literal standard kilogram and standard meter in a lab somewhere in France which is used to keep track of how much mass is actually in a kilogram, there is a standard used by all researchers like me to describe our samples of carbonate.

6852716289_cca3c0a635_b — A collection of belemnite fossils from the Pee Dee formation, similar to the one used for the PDB standard. Source

The most common standard used is from a belemnite fossil from the Pee Dee formation in North Carolina. Belemnites are extinct squid-like creatures that formed an internal shell, and one of those internal shells was fossilized, unearthed by a researcher and ground up to become the reference for all other researchers following. Samples of the carbonate in its fossil had more carbon-13’s per unit mass than most other fossil specimens known. Almost everything you measure will be “lighter” in terms of carbon, because carbon-12 is naturally so common on our planet.

Scientists needed a convenient way to put a number on this, so a simple formula was developed which would allow us to quickly communicate to each other how isotopically “heavy” or “light” a particular sample is in comparison to the Pee Dee Belemnite. The formula isn’t that important for our purposes but the units of its output are in parts per thousand, or “per mil” for short (same idea of how we shorten parts per hundred to “percent”).

The symbol for per mil is a percent sign with an extra little loop at the end: ‰. To make the shorthand complete, we also need to note that this is how much the carbon-13 to carbon-12 isotope ratio of a sample differs from the Pee Dee Belemnite. We do so, we use the Greek delta symbol (δ), commonly used in science and math to represent “difference or change from.” So a sample that has a carbon-13 to carbon-12 ratio which is 20 parts per thousand less than that of the Pee Dee Belemnite is written -20 ‰ δ¹³C_PDB. There are other samples that can be used as well, including Standard Mean Ocean water (SMOW), and the Vienna Pee Dee Belemnite (VPDB). It’s important to note which you are using so that people know the scale of your measurement!

Phew, hopefully that didn’t confuse the hell out of you! Next time, I’ll talk about how different δ¹³C (and for oxygen isotopes, δ¹⁸O) can tell us different details about the life of an organism. Here’s a cute gif of a scallop as a chaser after all that science you read.

A hinged shell does not a clam make (QUIZ)

On August 16, 2017August 16, 2017 By Dan KillamIn BiologyLeave a comment

Bivalves are so named for their two hard shell valves made of carbonate, linked by a soft ligament acting as a hinge. They use a strong adductor muscle to close their shell, and the relaxation of the muscle allows the springy ligament to reopen (you might be familiar with adductor muscles as the edible tasty part of a scallop). In deference to the bivalves, laptops and flip-phones are called “clamshell” designs. That satisfying snap into place when you spring the ligamen… I mean, hinge of a flip phone is an example of human design imitating the ingenuity of evolution. But it turns out that plenty of other members of the tree of life have also stumbled upon the durable idea of a hinged two-valve shell. On the other hand, plenty of bivalves have given up on the classic clamshell look. In fact, the ancestor of all bivalves had a one-part shell, and the hinge evolved later.

Test your knowledge by trying to identify which which pictures are bivalves and which aren’t. Answers and picture sources at the bottom!

ANSWERS

A. This is not even a mollusk, never mind a clam! It’s a different benthic (bottom-dwelling) invertebrate called a brachiopod, which make up their own phylum. To put that in perspective, brachiopods are as far from bivalves on the tree of life as you are (you’re in phylum Chordata)! Yet they evolved a similar look through a process called convergent evolution. If environmental needs are the same, organisms may come to the same solution multiple times. Much like wings for flight evolved independently in insects, birds and bats, bivalves and brachiopods both evolved a hinged shell as a form of protection from predation.

B. These are indeed bivalves: rock scallops commonly found off the coast of California (picture by me of an exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium). So similar to the brachiopods in their ridged, hinged shells. Like picture A, these guys specialize in living on hard, rocky nearshore bottoms. Some cultures do apparently eat brachiopods (I have not), but I have little doubt that rock scallops are tastier.

C. These are also bivalves: windowpane oysters. Also known as capiz shell, they are commonly used for decoration and art due to their beautiful, thin semi-transparent shells. A large industry harvests them off the shores of the Philippines, where they unfortunately are growing scarce due to overexploitation.

D. These are not bivalves! They are crustaceans called clam shrimp. They have little legs poking out of a hard hinged shell, and have been found in some of the harshest environments on earth, where they wait in extended hibernation, sometimes years, between bouts of rainfall.

E. Not a bivalve. These are another kind of crustacean called ostracods. Like clam shrimp, ostracods live in a hinged shell and swim around with the help of tiny legs, filter-feeding in the water column. Ostracods are everywhere in the oceans and in freshwater, but have undergone an extreme process of miniaturization from their ancestral form, and are now represent some of the smallest complex multicellular life known.

F. These are fossil ostracods. You can see why they are sometimes mistaken for bivalves! The givaway is that one valve is overhanging the other. Most bivalves have symmetry between the two halves of their shell, but ostracods and brachiopods do not.

G. This is a snail, so it’s a close molluskan cousin of bivalves. Some snails feature a hinged lid at their shell opening called an operculum. This operculum can be closed to protect from predators and also seal in water to help land snails from drying out between rains.

H. This is a bizarre bivalve called a rudist. They were common during the time of the dinosaurs but went extinct during the same extinction, 66 million years ago. While they come in many bizarre shapes, this elevator form (or as I prefer to call them, trash-can form) would have been stuck in the sediment with its small lid poking out at the surface. They could open and close the lid to filter-feed.

I. This is a giant clam, Tridacna crocea! Its shell is hidden, embedded in the coral that has grown to surround it on all sides. Only the mantle (soft “lips”) are exposed, and are brilliantly colored by the symbiotic algae in its tissue. It harvests the sugars made by the algae for food. Despite being embedded in the coral, the clam does have enough room to close and pull back its mantle if a predator approaches.

J. This is a one of the weirdest modern bivalves, called a hammer oyster. These guys are found in the tropics, and the hammerhead part of their shell is actually their hinge, extended at both sides. The hinge provides the surface area needed to “snow-shoe” on top of the soft sandy bottom where they live. Other bivalves sometimes take advantage and live on the oyster like a raft!

K. This is a different brachiopod. Notice the lack of symmetry between the valves which gives it away.

L. This is by far the weirdest modern bivalve, a shipworm. These guys live buried deep within wood and are the number-one killer of wooden ships. They secrete a long tube of carbonate and have largely given up the hinged lifestyle, looking more like worms than mollusks.