17th October 2019

conchologistsofamerica

15

How do mollusks build their shells?

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Mollusks make their shells from calcium they derive from their environment, either the food they eat or the water they dwell in. When a tiny mollusk hatches from its egg, it comes into the world equipped with a tiny shell. This shell is actually a part of the animal, growing as it grows, accommodating its needs.

In this regard, what kind of food do mollusks eat?

Mollusks eat many types of foods depending on their species. Many mollusks that have their body between two shells are herbivores, they mainly feed on algae. Squids and octopuses are predators and feed on fish and other sea creatures. The mollusk snails are mixed with herbivores and carnivores.

How do mollusks digest food?

A Mollusk has food brought in through a siphon system and then to its mouth. It then goes to a digestive gland and to its intestine. Wastes leave via the anus. A Mollusk has no formal nervous system, but has a series of ganglia that conduct impulses.

How do mollusks get their food and oxygen?

Aquatic mollusks such as snails, clams, and octopi typically breathe using gills inside their mantle cavity. Tubes call siphons bring water in and out of the body. Land snails and slugs do not have gills; they respire using a mantle cavity that has a large surface area lined with blood vessels.

1

How do bivalves get their food?

Most bivalves are filter feeders, using their gills to capture particulate food such as phytoplankton from the water. The protobranchs feed in a different way, scraping detritus from the seabed, and this may be the original mode of feeding used by all bivalves before the gills became adapted for filter feeding.

2

What is located just beneath the mantle in mollusks?

This cavity is formed by the mantle skirt, a double fold of mantle which encloses a water space. This space contains the mollusc's gills, anus, osphradium, nephridiopores, and gonopores. The mantle cavity functions as a respiratory chamber in most molluscs. In bivalves it is usually part of the feeding structure.

3

Do shells grow with the creature?

Seashells are the exoskeletons of mollusks such as snails, clams, oysters and many others. Such shells have three distinct layers and are composed mostly of calcium carbonate with only a small quantity of protein--no more than 2 percent. Thus, seashells grow from the bottom up, or by adding material at the margins.

4

What do soft bodied mollusks eat?

Most mollusks have a rasping tongue called a radula, armed with tiny teeth. This scrapes tiny plants and animals off rocks or tears food into chunks. Bivalves, such as oysters and mussels, filter food particles from the water with their gills. Cephalopods such as octopuses and cuttlefish are stealthy hunters.

5

What mollusks don't have a shell?

A few snail groups have stopped growing shells; they're called slugs . The next largest group is Bivalvia , the clams, oysters, and mussels . These are mollusks with two shells that they can close up tight for protection. Finally there is Cephalopoda , the squids and octopuses.

6

Do mollusks have an exoskeleton?

The shells of certain sponges and the various groups of shelled molluscs, including those of snails, clams, tusk shells, chitons and nautilus, are also exoskeletons. Some animals, such as the tortoise, have both an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton.

7

How old are the seashells on the beach?

Mollusk shells found on typical east coast (US) beaches can range from days old (the animal that made the shell died recently) to thousands of years old. Some shells in our state, North Carolina, have been dated as 40,000 years old.

8

Do all mollusks have a mantle?

The head contains the sense organs and "brain," while the visceral mass contains the internal organs. The "foot" is the muscular lower part of the body which is in contact with the substrate. Mollusks usually have a shell (although some do not). Mollusks also have an extension of the body wall called the mantle.

9

What is a mollusk without a shell?

Bivalves are mollusks with two shells such as clams and oysters. Univalves are animals with one shell such as a snail. Mollusks without shells include squid, banana slugs, and octopi. Their shells are made of calcium carbonate.

10

What is a two shelled mollusk called?

Variety of Mollusc shells (gastropods, snails and seashells). Closed and open shells of a marine bivalve, Petricola pholadiformis. A bivalve shell is composed of two hinged valves which are joined by a ligament.

11

Are sea shells living?

Most seashells on the beach are not attached to living organisms, but some are. Let's start with what most seashells are and then discuss some of the exceptions. Most seashells come from mollusks, a large group of marine animals including clams, mussels, and oysters, which exude shells as a protective covering.

12

What happens if you take a snail out of its shell?

A snail can't crawl out of its shell any easier than you can walk away from your fingernails! Q: What happens if a snail's shell gets cracked? A: The snail can repair minor injuries to its shell. The snail's mantle (the tissue surrounding its organs) secretes the calcium and proteins needed to rebuild the shell.

13

What is inside of a conch shell?

Conch (/k?ŋk, k?nt?/) is a common name that is applied to a number of different medium to large-sized shells. In North America, a conch is often identified as a queen conch, found off the coast of Florida. Queen conchs are valued for fish bait, and are also known as seafood.

14

What makes a conch shell?

The snail extracts calcium salts from sea water and secretes them in the form of a shell. Like other shellfish, they get the chemicals they need (mostly calcium carbonate) to build their shells from the water surrounding them (the chemicals are in solution).

15

What class of mollusks is the largest?

* Gastropoda: This largest and most successful class of mollusks contains 35,000 living species including snails, periwinkles, conches, whelks, limpets and sea slugs.

16

How does a mollusk move?

Mollusks, from land snails and slugs to oysters and mussels in the sea, have a few things in common. This foot helps mollusks dig and attach to rocks. It also helps them travel, but not very fast. When the mollusks are young tiny things floating in the ocean, that's when they really start to move.

17

How a clam is born?

Clams have solved this problem by doing something called broadcast spawning. When water temperatures begin to warm in the spring, males and females broadcast their reproductive cells, their sperm and eggs, into the water. Once fertilization does occur, a larval clam is born.

18

What type of circulatory system is found in most mollusks?

Open circulatory systems (evolved in crustaceans, insects, mollusks and other invertebrates) pump blood into a hemocoel with the blood diffusing back to the circulatory system between cells. Blood is pumped by a heart into the body cavities, where tissues are surrounded by the blood.

19

How are bivalves different from all other mollusks?

The most obvious difference between most cephalopods and other mollusks is the apparent lack of a shell. Octopuses do not have shells at all, while squids have a small internal shell. They are also the only cephalopods with four gills instead of two.)

20

How does a snail get its shell?

A baby snail begins its calcium-rich diet by eating the shell of the egg it hatched from, a convenient source of nutrients. As the snail continues to grow, its shell grows with it. The snail produces new shell material, like the soft material of its protoconch, that expands its shell and then hardens.

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