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Pteropoda (common name pteropods, from the Greek meaning "wing-foot") are specialized free-swimming pelagic sea snails and sea slugs, marine opisthobranch gastropods.Most live in the top 10 m of the ocean and are less than 1 cm long.
Most pteropods have some form of calcified shell, although it is often very light, even translucent. [ 3 ] The sea butterflies include some of the world's most abundant gastropod species; [ 1 ] as their large numbers are an essential part of the ocean food chain, they are a significant contributor to the oceanic carbon cycle .
Arctic food webs are considered simple, meaning there are few steps in the food chain from small organisms to larger predators. For example, pteropods are "a key prey item of a number of higher predators – larger plankton, fish, seabirds, whales".
Pteropods are strict pelagic mollusks that are highly adapted to life in the open ocean. [11] They are actively swimming in the water. Limacina helicina is a holoplanktonic species. Habitat of Limacina helicina is upper epipelagic and glacial. [16] It lives in temperatures from -0.4 °C to +4.0 °C or rarely up to 7 °C. [27]
These snails have adapted themselves to a pelagic living : . a transparent body and shell; the foot has evolved into a swimming fin that produces motion through undulation.
Clionoidea is a taxonomic superfamily of sea slugs, specifically naked (i.e. unshelled) pteropods, marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks in the clade Gymnosomata. [1] They are sometimes called "sea angels" or "naked sea butterflies" along with the other superfamily in the Gymnosomata. They can be found anywhere from the surface to a depth of ...
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The adaptations also explain the common name sea angel and the scientific name of the order: From Greek gymnos meaning "naked" and soma meaning "body". The lack of a heavy shell for gymnosomes allows them to hover on the upper water surfaces for longer periods, along with a streamlined body that reduces the drag coefficient.