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The mantle cavity is a central feature of molluscan biology. This cavity is formed by the mantle skirt, a double fold of mantle which encloses a water space. This space contains the mollusk's gills, anus, osphradium, nephridiopores, and gonopores. The mantle cavity functions as a respiratory chamber in most mollusks. In bivalves it is usually ...
The gastropod shell is part of the body of many gastropods, including snails, a kind of mollusc. The shell is an exoskeleton , which protects from predators, mechanical damage, and dehydration, but also serves for muscle attachment and calcium storage.
The mollusc (or mollusk [spelling 1]) shell is typically a calcareous exoskeleton which encloses, supports and protects the soft parts of an animal in the phylum Mollusca, which includes snails, clams, tusk shells, and several other classes. Not all shelled molluscs live in the sea; many live on the land and in freshwater.
Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks [a] (/ ˈ m ɒ l ə s k s /). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda . [ 5 ]
Each lens can form clear images, and is composed of relatively large, highly crystallographically aligned grains to minimize light scattering. [22] An individual chiton may have thousands of such ocelli. [18] These aragonite-based eyes [23] make them capable of true vision; [24] though research continues as to the extent of their visual acuity ...
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Mantle of giant clam with light-sensitive spots, which detect danger and cause the clam to close. Tridacna gigas, the giant clam, is the best-known species of the giant clam genus Tridacna. Giant clams are the largest living bivalve mollusks. Several other species of "giant clam" in the genus Tridacna are often misidentified as Tridacna gigas.
The osphradium is a pigmented chemosensory epithelium patch in the mantle cavity present in six of the eight extant classes of molluscs (it is absent in the scaphopoda and monoplacophora; among cephalopoda, only the nautilus has what appears to be a set of osphradia), on or adjacent to the ctenidia (gills).