Portal:Gastropods
The gastropods portalGastropods (/ˈɡæstrəpɒdz/), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (/ɡæsˈtrɒpədə/). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and from the land. There are many thousands of species of sea snails and slugs, as well as freshwater snails, freshwater limpets, land snails and slugs. The class Gastropoda is a diverse and highly successful class of mollusks within the phylum Mollusca. It contains a vast total of named species, second only to the insects in overall number. The fossil history of this class goes back to the Late Cambrian. , 721 families of gastropods are known, of which 245 are extinct and appear only in the fossil record, while 476 are currently extant with or without a fossil record. Gastropoda (previously known as univalves and sometimes spelled "Gasteropoda") are a major part of the phylum Mollusca, and are the most highly diversified class in the phylum, with 65,000 to 80,000 living snail and slug species. The anatomy, behavior, feeding, and reproductive adaptations of gastropods vary significantly from one clade or group to another, so stating many generalities for all gastropods is difficult. The class Gastropoda has an extraordinary diversification of habitats. Representatives live in gardens, woodland, deserts, and on mountains; in small ditches, great rivers, and lakes; in estuaries, mudflats, the rocky intertidal, the sandy subtidal, the abyssal depths of the oceans, including the hydrothermal vents, and numerous other ecological niches, including parasitic ones. Although the name "snail" can be, and often is, applied to all the members of this class, commonly this word means only those species with an external shell big enough that the soft parts can withdraw completely into it. Slugs are gastropods that have no shell or a very small, internal shell; semislugs are gastropods that have a shell that they can partially retreat into but not entirely. The marine shelled species of gastropods include species such as abalone, conches, periwinkles, whelks, and numerous other sea snails that produce seashells that are coiled in the adult stage—though in some, the coiling may not be very visible, for example in cowries. In a number of families of species, such as all the various limpets, the shell is coiled only in the larval stage, and is a simple conical structure after that. (Full article...) Selected articleJuliidae, common name the bivalved gastropods, is a family of minute sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks or micromollusks in the superfamily Oxynooidea, an opisthobranch group. This family of snails is extremely unusual in that their shells consist of two separate hinged pieces or valves, which are joined by a ligament, and which look nothing like a normal snail shell, but instead look almost exactly like the two hinged valves of a clam, a bivalve mollusk, a very different class of animals. In the past the Juliidae were known only from fossil shells, and not surprisingly these fossils were therefore interpreted as being the shells of bivalves. Julia, which is the type genus of the family, was named in 1862 by Augustus Addison Gould, who described it as a bivalve genus. Julliidae are known from the Eocene period to the Recent, but they probably first appeared during the Paleocene. (Read more...) Selected biography
Adolph Cornelis van Bruggen, also known as A. C. van Bruggen or Dolf van Bruggen (1929–2016) was a malacologist, entomologist and botanist from the Netherlands. He has been interested in the tropics and tropical Africa has dominated his broad scientific interest for more than 50 years now.
He was especially expert in the land snail families Streptaxidae, Achatinidae and Maizaniidae, and as of 2008, had written 655 scientific publications. (Read more...) Did you know?
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Selected imageA 3D reconstruction of the general anatomy of a preserved specimen of the minute (3 mm) sea slug Pseudunela cornuta, viewed from the right-hand side of the animal. This extremely small, shell-less species of opisthobranch gastropod is found in the Solomon Islands. In this image, the different internal organ systems of the animal are shown in artificial colors in order to be easier to view and understand. The mass which is colored green near the tip of the animal's visceral hump is the digestive gland. The black dot with the notation "ey" at the head end marks the position of the right eye. "f" marks the foot. Lists of gastropods
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Related portalsSubcategoriesCategories about gastropods: Request to editors: please do not create any more categories of gastropods by country. Instead create list articles, article with a list of the marine or non-marine gastropods of whichever country or area you are interested in. We would also like to empty and delete the two remaining country categories we have, adding that information to list articles instead. Thank you. Things to do
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