Mollusks Flashcards
Basic body plans of mollusks
Foot, mantle, shell, visceral mass, coelomate animals with bilateral symmetry
Foot
Soft muscular, usually contains the mouth and feeding structures, also used for movement
Mantle
- Membrane that surrounds the internal organs
Thin, delicate tissue layer, covers most of the body
Shell
Made of Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) secreted by glands in the mantle
Visceral mass
Contains the internal organs
Main classes of mollusks
Gastropoda, bivalve, cephalopoda
Gastropoda
“Stomach-foot”
- Snails, slugs, abalone, sea butterflies, sea hares, and nudibranchs
- Most snails have a lid-like part called an operculum on the back of the foot so they can dry their bodies into their shell and close off the opening
- “Shell-less” varieties exhibit behaviours that protect them and/or have ink glands, poisonous chemicals in their skin, nematocysts, and bright “danger” colours
Bivalvia
“two-shell”
- have 2 shells that can be tightly closed with strong muscles
- many burrow in mud/sand (clams) others have sticky threads to attach themselves to rocks (mussels)
- Mantle glands make CaCO3 that forms their shells, and mother of pearl to keep the inside walls of their shells smooth- pearls form when grain of sand/pebble gets between mantle&shell. Mother of pearl secreted to coat it to prevent further irritation
Cephalopoda
“head-foot”
- Octopi, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiluses
- have tentacles with sucking disks, some also have arms
- travel via jet-propulsion by taking in water through their mantle, then shooting it out through their siphon
Feeding of gastropods
Use a tongue shaped radula to scrape algae off of rocks/or eat land plant material (herbivore)/or drill holes in shells or their prey (carnivores)
Radula
A tooth made of flexible skin, spread over a strong supporting rod of cartilage. Feels like sandpaper.
- Move the outer skin layer back and forth over the cartilage rod to feed
- Herbivore mollusks use radulas to scrape algae off rocks
- Carnivorous mollusks use radular to drill into other mollusks & feed on their internal body parts
Feeding of cephalopods
Tend to be carnivorous, sharp jaws- “beak”
- Some also have poison/radula
- Tentacles used to catch & direct prey into their mouths
Feeding of bivalves
Filter-feeders
- Use gills to sift food (ex. phytoplankton) from the water
- Food is trapped in gills’ sticky mucous, then cilia direct it to their mouth
Respiration of marine mollusks
Use gills (usually located inside their mantle cavity)
Gills of marine mollusks
Parts of the mantle that made of a system of filamentous projections like the fringes of a blanket
- Have a rich supply of blood to move oxygen to the blood and remove CO2 from the blood
- Move water into & through the mantle cavity in a continuous stream
Respiration of Terrestrial mollusks
Breathe via diffusion through a specially adapted mantle cavity lined with many blood vessels
The mantle is highly folded to increase surface area, and is kept moist for efficient gas exchange
Circulation (internal transport) of gastropods/bivalves
Open circulatory system: Blood travels through tissues and sinuses (open spaces) which lead to/from gills & heart for O2 and CO2 exchange
- An open system is efficient enough for sessile & sedentary (slow-moving) species
Circulation of cephalopods
Closed circulatory system
- Too fast-moving (predators) to use the less efficient “open” system
- Blood travels within blood vessels, quickly delivers nutrients and oxygen
Excretion of solid wastes
Leave via anus
Have a complete digestive system (one way street)
Excretion of liquid wastes
Leave the blood via nephridia
After nephridia filter the blood, waste is passed out through the mantle cavity
Nephridia
AN evolutionary adaptation that lets mollusks efficiently maintain homeostasis in their body fluids
Response (nervous system) of bivalves
Simple
- Ganglia near their mouth, some nerve cords and simple sense organs
- Chemorecptors, touch receptors, statocysts, ocelli
Response (nervous system) of cephalopods
Active, intelligent predators
- Well developed nervous system
- Brain and have great memory, many sense organs to sense shapes by sight and textures by touch
- Are trainable and often studied to observe how animals learn
Response (nervous system) of Gastropods
All very different (no standard trend)