Mollusca II Flashcards
What are gastropods?
-stomach feet creatures
-snails & slugs
-predatory
-herbivores
-not many parasites
-benthic or pelagic
-terrestiral, marine, or freshwater
-enormous diversity of marine animals are gastropods along with marine shells
What are the synapomorphies of gastropods?
-shells: coiled or spiraled. univalve, one half to their shell
-terrestrial gastropods have operculum. a proteinaceous door that seals the snail inside its shell. contains moisture and hide from predators
what distinct the gastropods from bivalves?
a distinct scar
What is evolutionary torsion?
long evolutionary process of going from untwisted descendants to twisted descendant is possibly due to drift
what is ontogenetic torsion?
- occurs in every individual snail during embryonic development
- embryo starts untwisted and as it grows it twists
- causes twisting of the digestive system
what does ontogenetic torsion cause?
fouling: excreting digestive system waste on your head
What is coiling?
-proudction of snail shells
-starts as a baby and secrets a shell every year that that grows in a spiral
-naturally selected because its directly related to survival and reproduction
-some snails appear to have their shells falling off their bodies
What are the two different types of shells?
planospiral and conical
what are planospiral shells?
- cinnamon roll appearance
- single plane
- rest inside the previous corals
- strong but not as strong as the concave apical shape
- weight distributed in the middle
what are conical shells?
- rings rest on top of each other for a conical formation
- can withstand more force
- as the coils are growing, the weight equilibrium is shifted
- causes the shell to move to the left or right to off center to get weight equilibrium
- causes the loss of gils, auricle, and kidneys
What do gastropods eat?
- a lot of them are herbivorous that eat plants , some are predators other animals
-terrestrial eats plants through the radula, supported by the odontophore - some are fungivores that eat fungi
How do gastropods breathe?
- respiration happens better across a wet membrane
- diffusion is quick across a wet membrane
how do water gastropods breathe
gills
how do terrestrial gastropods breathe
- they belong to a class called pulmonates that have pneumostomes
- highly vascularized, lots of blood vessels around the mantle cavity
- ability to open and close
- some pulmonates are aquatic that have a siphon, extension of their mantle wall that they use to breathe around water
How do gastropods reproduce?
- most pulmonates are monoecious
- cross fertilize
- find each through chemical signature that the tentacles pick up
- slaps feet together
- shoot each other at high pressure with darts from their sacs that are made of calcium