Bouncing Snail-y Clams

For the most part, bivalves are a fairly conservative bunch. They seem to have worked out what they are good at early on in their history and most of them stick to it. There are, however, notable exceptions and perhaps few groups of bivalves are as exceptional as the Galeommatidae.

Waldo paucitentaculatus, from Valentich-Scott et al. (2013).

Galeommatids are small bivalves, less than a centimetre in length, with more or less thin shells. The hinge teeth are generally weak or absent. The valves of the shell are more or less gaping and in life are at least partially covered by the large, reflected mantle. The outer surface of the mantle is warty and bears several slender tentacles, the exact arrangement of tentacles varying by species. The foot is large and extends well outwards from the central body of the animal. In the most extreme cases, you might be forgiven for thinking you were looking at some sort of snail rather than a clam.

Many galeommatids have been found living as symbionts with other invertebrates such as in the burrows of annelids and crustaceans, or crawling on the surface of echinoderms. So far as is known, these relationships are commensal only, the clams using their hosts as a source of shelter and possibly excess food scraps, but species may be very exclusive in their choice of hosts. For instance, Mikkelsen & Bieler (1989) found the species Divariscintilla yoyo and D. troglodytes only in burrows of the mantis shrimp Lysiosquilla scabricauda, never in burrows of other potential hosts in the same area. It seems likely that this commensalism has allowed galeommatids to diversify in soft-bottom habitats, their larger hosts being able to dig into sediments in which the smaller clams would be quickly smothered (Valentich-Scott et al. 2013).

Unidentified galeommatid, copyright Ria Tan.

Many galeommatids possess a distinctive 'hanging-foot' morphology with the foot divided into two sections, a muscular anterior portion adapted for snail-like crawling, and an elastic posterior section (Bieler & Mikkelsen 1992). The primary byssus gland is located in the anterior section and is connected by a ciliated ventral groove to a terminal adhesive gland in the posterior section. Mikkelsen & Bieler (1989) found that Divariscintilla individuals kept in an aquarium spent most of their time hanging suspended via the posterior part of the foot. Threads produced by the byssus gland were transferred to the terminal adhesor and used to attach to a surface such as the glass of the aquarium (presumably, the clams would normally hang in this manner on the interior wall of the host burrow). When disturbed, hanging clams would rapidly bounce themselves up and down from their attachment point (hence one species being dubbed 'Divariscintilla yoyo'). If the clams wished to change their location, they would crawl on the muscular section of the foot, breaking the byssus threads behind them. The elastic part of the foot was not functional in crawling.

The majority of galeommatid clams are hermaphrodites, either protandrous (beginning life as males before maturing into females) or simultaneous. Eggs are not released into the water column but brooded within the ctenidia until larvae are released at a relatively advanced stage of development (whether the parent is able to feed while its gills are so occupied, I don't know). In a number of species, dwarf males are also present that do not live independently but reside within the mantle cavity of a female (I have seen these males referred to as 'parasitic' but I do not know if they are directly so). In this position, they are able to fertilise the female directly. Such behaviour may be seen as a further adaptation to the clam's commensal lifestyle, contained within the burrow of its host and potentially secluded from more conventional mates. Hidden away in the darkness, they make matryoshkas of themselves.

REFERENCES

Bieler, R., & P. M. Mikkelsen. 1992. Preliminary phylogenetic analysis of the bivalve family Galeommatidae. American Malacological Bulletin 9 (2): 157–164.

Mikkelsen, P. M., & R. Bieler. 1989. Biology and comparative anatomy of Divariscintilla yoyo and D. troglodytes, two new species of Galeommatidae (Bivalvia) from stomatopod burrows in eastern Florida. Malacologia 31 (1): 175–195.

Valentich-Scott, P., D. Ó. Foighil & J. Li. 2013. Where's Waldo? A new commensal species, Waldo arthuri (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Galeommatidae) from the northeastern Pacific Ocean. ZooKeys 316: 67–80.

Glyphyalinia Snails

North America (as with pretty much everywhere in the world outside the coldest regions) is home to a wide diversity of small, terrestrial snails that tend to pass unnoticed. Among the more diverse of these is the zonitid genus Glyphyalinia.

Glyphyalinia carolinensis, copyright John Slapcinsky.

Glyphyalinia species are often found in forest leaf-litter in the eastern part of North America. They have a low, translucent shell that is often about half a centimetre in diameter. Whorls of the shell increase regularly in size and are marked by a series of strongly impressed radiating lines in addition to finer growth lines. The umbilicus of the shell varies between species from completely absent to quite wide (Burch & Pearce 1990). The soft body of the animal varies in coloration, again depending on species. That of G. roemeri is all white except for the eyes; that of G. wheatleyi is almost uniformly black. The reproductive system of Glyphyalinia (which are hermaphroditic) includes a well-developed epiphallus and a distinct, ovoid spermathecal sac (Baker 1930).

Multiple species of Glyphyalinia may be found living in a single patch of forest though, at present, we know little about how (and whether) micro-habitats are partitioned between species. Some species seem to tolerate a wide variety of soil types and are correspondingly widely distributed. Others are more selective and localised; some may be considered endangered by habitat degradation. Even supposedly widespread species may be more vulnerable than appreciated: at least some may represent clusters of closely related species rather than truly uniform populations. These tiny snails can be notoriously difficult to study, making for a risk that they might just slip away barely noticed.

REFERENCES

Baker, H. B. 1930. The North American Retinellae. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 82: 193–219.

Burch, J. B., & T. A. Pearce. 1990. Terrestrial Gastropoda. In: Dindal, D. L. (ed.) Soil Biology Guide pp. 201–309. John Wiley & Sones: New York.

Arranging Nautiloids

For years, the higher taxonomy of cephalopods was expressed as a division between three subclasses: the Nautiloidea, the Ammonoidea and the Coleoidea. Coleoids were the clade of cephalopods that had lost the external shell, ammonoids were a Mesozoic lineage with complex septa dividing the chambers of the shell, and nautiloids were... the rest. From the tiny, possibly benthic, curved cones of the Cambrian where the class began, to gigantic straight-shelled monsters of the later Palaeozoic, to the modern chambered nautilus, all were lumped together as 'nautiloids'. The nautiloid subclass was explicitly understood to include the ancestors of the others but recognition of more phylogenetically coherent subgroups has been hampered by poor understanding about how the various nautiloid lineages were interrelated. And part of the problem in this regard has been uncertainty about just what features of their fossils we should be paying attention to.

Diorama reconstruction of Beloitoceras oncocerids, from the Burpee Museum.

One factor that has drawn attention in recent years has been the arrangement of muscle scars on the shell. Large muscle attachment scars appear as raised annular elevations on the inside of the shell towards the rear end of the body chamber (in practice, they are more often observed in fossils as depressions on the internal mould). In the living nautilus, the muscles attached to these scars function in the retraction of the head (King & Evans 2019). Modern nautilus possess a pair of large lateral scars in an arrangement that has been labelled 'pleuromyarian'. However, many of the earliest cephalopods possessed a ring of numerous small scars, an arrangement referred to as 'oncomyarian'. Other cephalopods might have scars restricted to the dorsal ('dorsomyarian') or ventral ('ventromyarian') midline.

Primary types of muscle scar in nautiloids, from King & Evans (2019). 'D' and 'V' indicate dorsal and ventral, respectively, and arrows indicate direction of aperture.

Another feature that has been called out has been the structure of the connecting rings around the siphuncle. Shelled cephalopods, you will recall, have the shell divided into chambers separated by septa. Though the bulk of the animal is found in the final body chamber, a fleshy cord called the siphuncle runs back through the remaining chambers. In life, the siphuncle is used to control the levels of fluid in the chambers, which in turn controls the animal's buoyancy. The boundary between the siphuncle and the surrounding chamber is marked a toughened sheath, referred to as the connecting ring. In the modern nautilus, the connecting ring is comprised of two layers, an outer calcareous layer and an inner chitinous layer. In comparable fossils, the latter chitinous layer has decomposed after death so only the outer layer is preserved. However, some extinct cephalopod groups preserve evidence of calcification in the inner as well as the outer layer. Based on the distinction between these two siphuncle types, Mutvei (2015) supported dividing most of the nautiloids between two major lineages, the Nautilosiphonata (with a nautilus-type siphuncle) and the Calciosiphonata (with the internally calcified connecting rings).

A couple of years earlier, the same author (Mutvei 2013) had proposed recognition of a superorder Multiceratoidea for nautiloids that combined multiple muscle scars with a nautilus-type siphuncle. Examples of nautiloid orders with such a combination included the Ellesmeroceratida (small nautiloids with densely placed septa), the Oncoceratida (often short, squat nautiloids) and the Discosorida (similarly squat forms with complex bulging connecting rings). All of these were found in the earlier part of the Palaeozoic with the oncoceratids dieing off in the early Carboniferous. Mutvei (2013) also included the coiled Tarphyceratida and the egg-shaped Ascoceratida in this group. Later, King & Evans (2019) redefined this grouping as the Multiceratia, excluding the Tarphyceratida and Ascoceratida on the grounds that they had ventromyarian rather than oncomyarian muscle scars. Mutvei (2013) suggested that, rather than representing retractor muscles, these smaller repeated scars were associated with an outgrowth of the mantle, either as tentacles or a muscular 'skirt', that was used to capture micro-plankton.

Phylogeny of 'nautiloids' supported by King & Evans (2019). Though not shown on this diagram, the majority of authors have suggested that ammonoids and coleoids are descended from Orthoceratida.

King & Evans (2019) proposed a reclassification of the subclass Nautiloidea between five subclasses defined primarily by muscle structure. Apart from the earliest oncomyarian Plectronoceratia, most 'nautiloids' could be divided between two lineages. On one side were the dorsomyarian Orthoceratia (usually thought to include the ancestors of the ammonoids and coleoids). On the other, the oncomyarian Multiceratia would eventually give rise to the ventromyarian Tarphyceratia which in turn included the ancestors of the pleuromyarian Nautilida. Note that many of the reocognised subclasses (and orders) remain paraphyletic but we are at least approaching a more informative picture of cephalopod evolution than the earlier unceremonious dumping into 'Nautiloidea' (I should probably also remind you that, for various reasons, most invertebrate palaeontologists still don't regard strict monophyly as a taxonomic requirement in and of itself).

The usage of muscle scars and connecting rings as classificatory keys is handicapped by the difficulty of observing them. As internal structures, they each require careful preparation of a specimen to observe. And once you've gotten to a position where you can see them, it seems not to be particularly easy to tell just what you're looking at. As a result, muscle scarring and siphon structure remains undescribed for the majority of nautiloid species. Judging the structure of connecting rings seems to be particularly challenging and some have gone so far as to suggest that purported different structures may be the result of post-mortem taphonomic processes (King & Evans 2019). Nevertheless, what we do know suggests that such features remain reasonably consistent within each of the well-recognised nautiloid orders. And Mutvei's (2015) concept of Calciosiphonata vs Nautilosiphonata does largely line up with King & Evans' (2019) dorsomyarian vs oncomyarian-ventromyarian lineages. There are, of course, some notable exceptions. Whether these will cause the developing structure to collapse, or whether they indicate mistakes in interpretation, only continued research will tell.

REFERENCES

King, A. H., & D. H. Evans. 2019. High-level classification of the nautiloid cephalopods: a proposal for the revision of the Treatise Part K. Swiss Journal of Palaeontology 138: 65–85.

Mutvei, H. 2013. Characterization of nautiloid orders Ellesmerocerida, Oncocerida, Tarphycerida, Discosorida and Ascocerida: new superorder Multiceratoidea. GFF 135 (2): 171–183.

Mutvei, H. 2015. Characterization of two new superorders Nautilosiphonata and Calciosiphonata and a new order Cyrtocerinida of the subclass Nautiloidea; siphuncular structure in the Ordovician nautiloid Bathmoceras (Cephalopoda). GFF 137 (3): 164–174.

Colus and Co.

The neogastropods have long been a challenge taxonomically. They are extremely diverse, encompassing a large number of species with a wide range of lifestyles, but they also exhibit exhibit regular patterns of convergence and/or conservatism between different lineages. Perhaps the most challenging group of all has been the whelks, commonly recognised as the superfamily Buccinoidea, a massive radiation of over 3300 known species. Whelks are particularly diverse in colder regions of the world's oceans, including amongst their number there the members of the family Colidae.

Hairy colus Colus pubescens, copyright E. A. Lazo-Wasem.

Colus has been used as the basis of a family group name at many levels of whelk classification, whether it be Colidae, Colinae or Colini. The gastropod classification laid out by Bouchet et al. (2017) recognised 'Colini' as a diverse tribe within the main whelk family Buccinidae, including a range of cold-water taxa. However, a more recent phylogenetic analysis of the buccinoids by Kantor et al. (2021) found Bouchet et al.'s concept of Colini to be polyphyletic, placing the type genus Colus outside what the called the 'core Buccinoidea'. As such, they raised Colidae to the status of a separate family and restricted it to just two genera, Colus and Turrisipho.

In this restricted form, the Colidae are thin-shelled, medium-sized to large whelks with the largest having shells up to twenty centimetres in length. The shells are fusiform to ovate in shape with a more or less elongate siphonal canal and covered by a brown periostracum. Axial sculpture is absent; spiral sculpture is expressed as more or less prominent cords. The aperture is closed with a operculum bearing a terminal nucleus. The animal has a more or less long proboscis. The radula bears three teeth per row; the middle tooth has a more or less square base and one to three cusps, with the middle cusp the largest, whereas the lateral teeth bear three hooked cusps with the outermost cusp significantly larger than the other two. None of these features, it should be noted, is entirely unique to the Colidae (Kantor et al. 2021).

Turrisipho dalli, from BoldSystems.

Members of the Colidae are found in the Arctic and northern Atlantic Oceans, from subtidal to bathyal depths. Because they are not targeted commercially, the life habits of colids have not been well studied. However, what we do know indicates that they are likely predators on other invertebrates (Kosyan 2007). The long proboscis of most species is probably used to pull infaunal animals such as amphipods and bivalves out of their burrows. Colids have well-developed salivary glands and it is possible that these may produce toxins as found in other neogastropods. They do not have anything like the elaborate venom delivery setups like those found in the conoids, but even a little dose of toxic saliva helps to subdue a struggling crustacean.

REFERENCES

Bouchet, P., J.-P. Rocroi, B. Hausdorf, A. Kaim, Y. Kano, A. Nützel, P. Parkhaev, M. Schrödl & E. E. Strong. 2017. Revised classification, nomenclator and typification of gastropod and monoplacophoran families. Malacologia 61 (1–2): 1–526.

Kantor, Y. I., A. E. Fedosov, A. R. Kosyan, N. Puillandre, P. A. Sorokin, Y. Kano, R. Clark & P. Bouchet. In press 2021. Molecular phylogeny and revised classification of the Buccinoidea (Neogastropoda). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Kosyan, A. R. 2007. Morphological features, ecology, and distribution of poorly studied molluscan genera of the Colinae subfamily (Gastropoda, Buccinidae) from the far eastern seas of Russia. Oceanology 47 (4): 531–536.

The Age of the Perisphinctoid

During the Mesozoic era, the world's oceans were dominated by the ammonites. The coiled shells of these extinct cephalopods can be found preserved in rocks of this era around the planet, encompassing a bewildering array of species. During the latter half of the Jurassic, the most diverse ammonites were members of the superfamily Perisphinctoidea.

Likely Perisphinctes, copyright Spacebirdy.

Perisphinctoids first appear around the mid-point of the Jurassic, during what is known as the Bajocian epoch (Énay & Howarth 2019). As with other major ammonite groups, perisphinctoids are characterised by features of the folding around the edges of the septa that separate chambers of the shell. Perisphinctoids have basally five-lobed septa that differ from their ancestors in the Stephanoceratoidea in the loss of the U_II lobe towards the outer edge of the whorl. The earliest perisphinctoids had more or less evolute shells (that is, later whorls did not significantly overlap the predecessors) with a rounded venter. Some later lineages would become more involute, with older whorls becoming partially hidden, and the venter might get sharper or flatter. Others would pretty much retain the original conformation to the end. The majority of perisphinctoids exhibited strong ribs on the outside of the shell, these ribs usually branching towards the outer rim of the whorl. Some forms developed further elaborations of the shells such as prominent nodules or spines.

Dimorphism was widespread in the perisphinctoids, if not universal. As with other dimorphic ammonites, populations included distinct microconches and macroconches (the majority interpretation is that macroconches were female and microconches male, but of course this is speculative). Macroconches usually had simple peristomes whereas microconches commonly had the mature shell aperture flanked by elongate lappets. The early Late Jurassic (Bathonian and Callovian) Tulitidae had a tendency in macroconches for the shell coiling to become eccentric in the outermost whorls, the peristome being distinctly skewed from the main plane of the shell.

Aspidoceras hirsutum, copyright Daderot.

Perisphinctoid faunas were often markedly provincial with many lineages being restricted to particular regions (such as the bipolar Perisphinctes or the western Eurasian Parkinsoniinae). They were mostly animals of shallower waters, perhaps foraging close to the bottom. This may go some way to explaining their high diversity but it can provide a challenge to their use in stratigraphy. Ammonites of the 'perisphinctoid' type would survive the end of the Jurassic but would fade from the fossil record not too long afterwards. Nevertheless, that would not be the end of their lineage: at the beginning of the Cretaceous, they would also spawn two derived descendants (Besnosov & Michailova 1991), the largely smooth-shelled Desmoceratoidea and the Ancyloceratoidea with four-lobed septa, that would continue to dominate the Mesozoic seas.

And while I'm on the subject of ammonites, I have another correction to make to an earlier post. However, while I was able to shift some of the blame for the correction in my last post onto my original source, in this case the blame is entirely mine. In a prior discussion of the live anatomy of ammonites, I discussed the evidence that the aptychus (a pair of calcified plates that probably functioned as an operculum) originated as a modification of the lower jaw. As such, I criticised reconstructions of ammonites that showed the aptychus articulating with the shell in the manner of a nautilus' hood. Unfortunately, I had overlooked a significant difference between ammonites and nautiluses. The coiled shell of a nautilus is exogastric—that is, when they evolved from their straight-shelled ancestors, the shell coiled upwards so the original lower edge corresponded to the outside of the whorl. However, the shell of ammonites was endogastric, with the shell coiled downwards so the original venter was on the inside (in the absence of preserved soft anatomy, we can infer this from the position of the siphuncle within the shell). This means that, even though the lower ammonite aptychus was anatomically on the opposite side of the animal from the upper nautilus hood, functionally they would have appeared in life to occupy much the same position. Entirely my mistake, and a reminder to me that describing orientation in coiled animals can be confusing.

REFERENCES

Besnosov, N. V., & I. A. Michailova. 1991. Higher taxa of Jurassic and Cretaceous Ammonitida. Paleontological Journal 25 (4): 1–19.

Énay, R., & M. K. Howarth. 2019. Part L, revised, volume 3B, chapter 7: Systematic descriptions of the Perisphinctoidea. Treatise Online 120: 1–184.

Crossing the Busycon

I must admit that when I think about the biodiversity hotspots of the world, the eastern seabord of the United States would not be among the first regions to come to mind. But for this post, I'm looking at a dramatic and eye-catching radiation of molluscs for which this is their centre of distribution. I speak of the giant whelks of the Busyconidae.

Left-handed whelk or lightning whelk Sinistrofulgur sinistrum, copyright Andrea Westmoreland.

Busyconid whelks first appeared in the waters of eastern North America during the early Oligocene, about 32 million years ago, in what was then the Mississippi Sea and is now the Mississippi River Basin. As the oceans receded from the Mississippi, they spread into the Gulf of Mexico and are now found between Massachusetts in the north and the Yucatan Peninsula in the south. Except for an introduced population of the channeled whelk Busycotypus canaliculatus that has become established in San Francisco Bay in California since the 1930s, the family has never been found elsewhere. These are remarkably large snails: smaller examples are still more than five centimetres in length, and the largest of all get close to a foot (Petuch et al. 2015). Mature shells have a large body whorl, generally higher than the visible spire, with a long siphonal canal. SCulpture of the shell, if present, is dominated by spiral elements, and the shoulder of the whorls may be marked by prominent carinae and/or spines. As is standard for neogastropods, the classification of this group has shifted around a bit over the years, whether treated as their own family or as a subfamily Busyconinae of the related families Buccinidae or Melongenidae. In a recent review of the busyconids, Petuch et al. (2015) recognised fifteen living species in six genera. The number of fossil species that has been described is significantly larger (over one hundred); not surprisingly, these large solid shells have an excellent fossil record. However, it is worth noting that some of the living species may be remarkably variable in shell morphology and I don't know whether fossil representatives have been subject to the same systematic scrutiny.

Knobbed whelk Busycon carica, copyright Matt Tillett.

All busyconids are predators on bivalves, particularly on burrowing clams. In general, the whelk envelops its victim in its muscular foot and then uses the edge of the shell lip to open the clam's shell, allowing the whelk to insert its radula and rasp out the clam's flesh. The preferred method of opening the shell depends on the species of whelk and may be classed as 'wedging' and 'chipping'. 'Wedging' is the most straightforward method and believed to be the more primitive; wedgers insert the shell lip into the gap between valves and directly force them apart and/or prevent the clam shell from closing. 'Chipping' is more involved and performed by members of the genera Busycon and Sinistrofulgur. In this method, the edge of the whelk shell is rhythmically pounded against the commissure between the clam shell valves, progressively wearing at the valve margins until enough of an opening has been made to insert the radula. The process may take multiple hours of patient hammering. Chipping requires more power and a heavier shell than wedging (chipping whelks may damage their own shell as well as the prey's) but also allows the whelk to attack thicker-shelled clams.

Though each species of busyconid will generally use one or the other method of opening prey, there are borderline examples. Larger individuals of Busycotypus canaliculatus, usually a wedger, may adopt a process like chipping though their attacks on the prey shell are usually less systematic than true chippers. And while I haven't found anywhere that says as much, I suspect that young chippers may spend the earlier parts of their life as wedgers untill they have developed the shell strength for chipping. Dietl (2004) suggested that chipping behaviour may have originated twice among busyconids, based on the fossil evidence of its traces left on clam shells. The modern chippers appear to derive from a single origin in the later Pliocene. However, evidence of an earlier and now seemingly extinct chipping lineage was also found in shells from the late Miocene. These earlier chippers seemingly did not belong to any of the modern chipping genera which are not known from the Miocene deposits in which chipped clams were found. Instead, Dietl proposed that the culprit was a large Busycotypus.

Channeled whelk Busycotypus canaliculatus laying a string of egg cases, copyright Eric Heupel.

Busyconid whelks have long been of significance to people living in areas where they are found. Not only are the shells eye-catching and ornamental objects in themselves, the animals are also harvested for food (though their meat is often sold under misleading names such as 'conch' or 'clam strips'). Archaeological examples have been found of busycon shells being used for tools; Petuch et al. (2015) illustrate an example of a left-handed whelk Sinistrofulgur sinistrum shell with holes drilled into it that would have allowed it to be attached to a stick and used as a shovel. These animals are truly an icon of North America's eastern seaboard.

REFERENCES

Dietl, G. P. 2004. Origins and circumstances of adaptive divergence in whelk feeding behavior. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 208: 279–291.

Petuch, E. J., R. F. Myers & D. P. Berschauer. 2015. The Living and Fossil Busycon Whelks: Iconic Mollusks of Eastern North America. San Diego Shell Club, Inc.

The Fate of Oligochiton

Chitons are one of the most distinctive and evolutionarily divergent groups of molluscs alive today. But compared to other groups of molluscs, the fossil record of chitons is rather sparse—or at least sparsely studied. It's not hard to see why. The multi-plated nature of the chiton shell means that it tends to fall apart after death, and the structure of the plates is such that critical features are easily abraded.

(Clockwise from top left) head, intermediate and tail valves of Lepidochitona lioplax, from Dell'Angelo et al. (2011).

Lepidochitona lioplax is one example of a fossil chiton. It was originally described from Oligocene rocks belonging to the Sooke Formation of southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Only four moderate-sized valves were initially identified: one head valve, one intermediate, and two tails (so at least two individuals were involved). The valves had a smooth outer surface without a strong distinction in appearance between the central and lateral areas. The insertion plates (lateral projections of the lower surface of the valves that in life anchor them into the surrounding girdle) were very short. The sutural laminae (anterior projections of the lower surface of the intermediate and tail valves that articulate with the valve in front) were low, wide, and divided in the middle by a broad shallow surface. Slits in the lateral insertion plates were numerous, with several in the tail valves and probably two or three on each side in the intermediate valves (Smith 1960). When first described, this species was thought distinct enough to belong in its own genus Oligochiton.

Oligochiton lioplax would then go little reported on until 2011 when Dell'Angelo et al. described an assemblage of chiton fossil from the latest Eocene or early Oligocene of the Lincoln Creek Formation in Washington State. Specimens of lioplax were relatively numerous in this collection and Dell'Angelo et al. were able to examine close to a hundred valves. Their observations would lead to something of a downgrade in the species status. Rather than deserving its own extinct genus, Dell'Angelo et al. felt that lioplax could be comfortably accommodated in the living genus Lepidochitona. Its smooth valves are unusual within Lepidochitona but not unique. The supposed multiple slits in the sides of the valves did not stand up to scrutiny. Instead, intermediate valves of L. lioplax bore only a single slit on each side, in line with other Lepidochitona species. The original inference of multiple slits was an error due to the original specimen being still partially embedded in the surrounding matrix.

Lepidochitona lioplax is one of the earliest known representatives of its genus but its exact significance is obscure. It has been suggested as a direct ancestor of the modern subgenus Spongioradsia but this, again, was based on the supposed slits in the intermediate valves that Dell'Angelo et al. refuted. To know how L. lioplax connects to the big picture of Lepidochitona evolution, we would probably need a better picture of Lepidochitona evolution overall.

REFERENCES

Dell'Angelo, B., A. Bonfitto & M. Taviani. 2011. Chitons (Polyplacophora) from Paleogene strata in western Washington State, U.S.A. Journal of Paleontology 85 (5): 936–954.

Smith, A. G. 1960. Amphineura. In: Moore, R. C. (ed.) Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology pt I. Mollusca 1: Mollusca—General Features, Scaphopoda, Amphineura, Monoplacophora, Gastropoda—General Features, Archaeogastropoda and some (mainly Paleozoic) Caenogastropoda and Opisthobranchia pp. I41–I76. Geological Society of America, and University of Kansas Press.

Snails of Crystal

In many parts of the world, searching under pots or among other garden rubbish may turn up minute snails with translucent shells. Among the various families which might be found in this way are representatives of the family Pristilomatidae, commonly known as crystal snails.

Common crystal snail Vitrea crystallina, copyright O. Gargominy.

All members of the Pristilomatidae* are tiny: the minute gem snail Hawaiia minuscula, one species which has become widespread, is a giant within the family at close to three millimetres in diameter. The shells have a low spire, growing in more or less a disc shape, and are generally smooth or ornamented with very fine radial lines. In life, they are transparent or a cloudy white, explaining their vernacular name. Internal organs are often visible through the shell. The Pristilomatidae are part of the broader group of mostly tiny snails known as the Gastrodontoidea (which I've covered on this site earlier, albeit in a rather inept fashion). Even among this array, however, they are notably small. Within the gastrodontoids, the pristilomatids are primarily distinguished by the structure of the male genitalia, in which the vas deferens in attached to the proximal end of the penial tunica (a sheath of muscle tissue around the penis; Hausdorf 1998). However, there is a bit of an open question about how well supported they are as a group. Their distinguishing features could all be side effects of their reduced size.

*In older texts, you may find this family referred to as the Vitreidae, after one of the larger genera included. However, the name Pristilomatidae has priority.

Minute gem snail Hawaiia minuscula, copyright Chris Mallory.

Within their native range, crystal snails may mostly be found in western North America and the western Palaearctic. Several species, however, have become further distributed in association with humans. As such, they are mostly found in damp, disturbed habitats, such as gardens, nurseries and parks. They will be found in secluded locations such as under flower pots or buried among moss or leaf litter. Some species prefer to fully bury themselves within the soil. Some other members of the gastrodontoids are known to be predatory, feeding on small arthropods or other snails and their eggs, but I haven't been able to find any direct reference to such habits among pristilomatids. It seems more likely that they prefer to feed on decaying fragments of vegetation. They do not seem to be regarded as presenting a challenge to the gardener; rather, they may provide their own small amount of assistance in keeping things tidy.

REFERENCES

Hausdorf, B. 1998. Phylogeny of the Limacoidea sensu lato (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora). Journal of Molluscan Studies 64 (1): 35-66.

Hausdorf, B. 2000. Biogeography of the Limacoidea sensu lato (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora): vicariance events and long-distance dispersal. Journal of Biogeography 27: 379–390.

The Shells of Ducks and Swans

The freshwater environment has been a challenging one for bivalves. Though there is a reasonable diversity of freshwater bivalves around the world, they tend to be dominated by members of a select few lineages. One of the most successful groups of freshwater bivalves is the family Unionidae, and among the more widespread unionids are the freshwater mussels of the genus Anodonta.

Swan mussel Anodonta cygnea, copyright Gail Hampshire.

Anodonta species are found widely across northern Eurasia and North America, commonly referred to as 'mussels' in Eurasia and 'floaters' in North America. They are relatively large bivalves (one of the largest, the swan mussel Anodonta cygnea of Eurasia, can be up to about twenty centimetres across) with an irregularly elliptical shape and a relatively thin shell. One of their distinguishing features compared to other freshwater bivalves is the teeth of the hinge connecting the shell valves have been lost. Instead, the valves are primarily held together by the dorsal ligament (Moore 1969). Freshwater mussels are most commonly found in mud at the bottom of slow-moving or still waters, such as lakes or slow rivers.

One of the main hurdles to bivalve colonisation of fresh water has been the question of dispersal. In most marine bivalves, populations mostly disperse via their planktonic larvae. But because of the directed flow of water in rivers and the like, passive plankton fare less well in freshwater environments. If you just float along a stream, eventually you'll be washed out to sea. Anodonta species, like other unionids, solve the problem of getting back upstream through parasitic larvae called glochidia. Female Anodonta have the rear part of the gills modified into a pouch (or marsupium) in which the developing larvae are initially incubated. When they are released by their mother, the glochidia already possess a bivalved, sharp-edged shell. Released glochidia swim towards a suitable host in the form of a passing fish and use the valves of the shell to clamp onto a narrow appendage of the host's body such as its fins or gills. Eventually, a cyst forms around the attached glochid within with it develops until it is ready to emerge and attain maturity.

Winged floater Anodonta nuttalliana, a North American species, copyright Eric Wagner.

Freshwater molluscs have a history of being subject to taxonomic chicanery, through the Nouvelle École of late nineteenth-century France and other excesses of typological enthusiasm. Anodonta is no exception. The shells of freshwater mussels tend to be very plastic in morphology, their size, shape and appearance being strongly affected by their developmental environment. As a result, they include what were labelled by Riccardi et al. (2020) as "some of the most over-described species on the planet". The swan mussel A. cygnea alone has had somewhere in the region of 550 different species-group names applied to it at one time or another. Modern estimates of Anodonta diversity are considerably more conservative. Just four species are currently recognised from Eurasia (Riccardi et al. 2020) with the swan mussel and the duck mussel A. anatina being the most widespread (offhand, I don't know whether the mussels get their vernacular names because they're eaten by swans and ducks or because the shape of the shell is supposed to look like a swan or duck). Considering the travails of shell-based taxonomy, it is noteworthy that these species often cannot be distinguished with certainty without checking the soft tissue. North America is home to six or seven recognised species with diversity being higher to the west of the continent.

Nevertheless, there are still grounds for questioning the current taxonomy of Anodonta. Molecular studies of the genus by Chong et al. (2008), Bolotov et al. (2020) and Riccardi et al. (2020) have all suggested that Anodonta as currently recognised may be paraphyletic to closely related genera. In particular, there may be a divide between the Eurasian and North American lineages with the North American species closer to taxa found in eastern Asia. Anodonta has been a problem genus in the past and it sees no reason why it should allow itself to be reformed.

REFERENCES

Bolotov, I. N., A. V. Kondakov, E. S. Konopleva, I. V. Vikhrev, O. V. Aksenova, A. S. Aksenov, Y. V. Bespalaya, A. V. Borovskoy, P. P. Danilov, G. A. Dvoryankin, M. Y. Gofarov, M. B. Kabakov, O. K. Klishko, Y. S. Kolosova, A. A. Lyubas, A. P. Novoselov, D. M. Palatov, G. N. Savvinov, N. M. Solomonov, V. M. Spitsyn, S. E. Sokolova, A. A. Tomilova, E. Froufe, A. E. Bogan, M. Lopes-Lima, A. A. Makhrov & M. V. Vinarski. 2020. Integrative taxonomy, biogeography and conservation of freshwater mussels (Unionidae) in Russia. Scientific Reports 10: 3072.

Chong, J. P., J. C. B. Box, J. K. Howard, D. Wolf, T. L. Myers & K. E. Mock. 2008. Three deeply divided lineages of the freshwater mussel genus Anodonta in western North America. Conserv. Genet. 9: 1303–1309.

Moore, R. C. (ed.) 1969. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology pt N. Mollusca 6. Bivalvia vol. 1. The Geological Society of America, Inc. and The University of Kansas.

Riccardi, N., E. Froufe, A. E. Bogan, A. Zieritz, A. Teixeira, I. Vanetti, S. Varandas, S. Zaccara, K.-O. Nagel & M. Lopes-Lima. 2020. Phylogeny of European Anodontini (Bivalvia: Unionidae) with a redescription of Anodonta exulcerata. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 189: 745–761.

The Age of Olcostephaninae

Ammonites are among the iconic fossils of the Mesozoic. These shelled cephalopods dominated the oceans during their heyday and diversified into a wide array of taxa. Many of these have become significant for recognising particular periods in the earth's history; among these are members of the Olcostephaninae of the Early Cretaceous.

Olcostephanus astierianus, copyright Hectonichus.

The Olcostephaninae, as recognised by Wright et al. (1996), are known from the Valanginian and Hauterivian epochs of the Early Cretaceous, disappearing from the fossil record some time during the earlier part of the latter. The Valanginian ran from about 140 to 133 million years ago; the Hauterivian lasted for about three and a half million years after that. A brief reminder here: the Cretaceous lasted for a bloody long time, with more time separating the beginning and end of the Cretaceous than separates the end of the Cretaceous and today. One genus described from Pakistan, Provalanginites, has been supposed to come from the latest Jurassic but, as this is at least five million years earlier than any known olcostephanine anywhere else, its age is regarded as questionable. Olcostephanines can be very abundant in formations of the right age. A mass occurrence in the latest Valanginian of northwestern Europe has long been recognised as a geological marker, dubbed the 'Astierien Schichten' (Astieria being a synonym of Olcostephanus; Lukeneder 2004).

Saynoceras verrucosum, from here.

Olcostephanines are small to moderate-sized ammonites. Lukeneder (2004) refers to macroconches* of Olcostephanus guebhardi up to about ten centimetres in diameter. The olcostephanines pictured in Wright et al. (1996) seem to indicate an average size smaller than this and the group also includes a number of dwarf genera that look to only be a bit over one centimetre in diameter. The shell of olcostephanines is usually characterised by a pattern of transverse ribs coalescing in bundles to meet tubercles on the inner margin of the whorl. One dwarf genus, Saynoceras, has a stronger ornamentation of two rows of tubercles near the midline and outer margins of the whorls.

*A common pattern in ammonoids is the co-occurrence within a formation of distinct forms, termed 'macroconches' and 'microconches', that are broadly similar except in size and the configuration of the aperture (generally simple in macroconches but with protruding lappets in microconches). The most popular interpretation of this phenomenon is that the forms represent sexual dimorphism. Obviously which sex is which can't be known at this time though comparison with living cephalopods suggests that the macroconches may be female.

Valanginites nucleus, from here.

Olcostephanines are very similar in external appearance to the earlier subfamily Spiticeratinae (known from the very earliest part of the Cretaceous) and are likely to be descended from among that group. Though the Olcostephaninae themselves as currently recognised disappeared during the Hauterivian epoch, this may not have been the actual end of the olcostephanine lineage. The slightly later Holcodiscidae are very similar to the olcostephanines and some have questioned whether they even warrant separation. There is also a strong similarity between early members of the superfamily Desmoceratoidea and species of Olcostephanus (Wright et al. 1996). If this similarity also indicates ancestry, then the family line of the olcostephanines would continue right until the final extinction of the ammonites at the end of the Cretaceous.

REFERENCES

Lukeneder, A. 2004. The Olcostephanus level: an Upper Valanginian ammonoid mass-occurrence (Lower Cretaceous, Northern Calcareous Alps, Austria). Acta Geologica Polonica 54 (1): 23–33.

Wright, C. W., J. H. Calloman & M. K. Howarth. 1996. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology pt L. Mollusca 4, revised vol. 4. Cretaceous Ammonoidea. The Geological Society of America, Inc.: Boulder (Colorado), and The University of Kansas: Lawrence (Kansas).

Platyschismatinae

Platyschisma helicoides, from Knight et al. (1960).

In an earlier post on this site, I commented on some of the various ways that gastropods deal with the fact that their development tends to put their anus uncomfortably close to their mouth. A common solution is the development of a sinus or slit in the shell that provides spaces for the anus to be moved backwards.

One of the major gastropod groups exhibiting such a feature is known as the Pleurotomarioidea. In the modern fauna, pleurotomarioids are not hugely abundant, with living species restricted to deep waters. However, they were one of the dominant gastropod groups back in the Palaeozoic when they were represented by a number of families. One Palaeozoic pleurotomarioid group is the Platyschismatinae, known from the Lower Ordovician to the Middle Permian (Knight et al. 1960). Platyschismatines went with the sinus option, with a sinus present at or above the midpoint on the outer edge of the shell opening. Knight et al. (1960) included five genera in the Platyschismatinae. The type genus, Platyschisma, has a slightly flattened spiral and a relatively thin shell. Some of the other platyschismatines were also relatively flat.

REFERENCE

Knight, J. B., L. R. Cox, A. M. Keen, R. L. Batten, E. L. Yochelson & R. Robertson. 1960. Gastropoda: systematic descriptions. In: Moore, R. C. (ed.) Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology pt I. Mollusca 1: Mollusca—General Features, Scaphopoda, Amphineura, Monoplacophora, Gastropoda—General Features, Archaeogastropoda and some (mainly Paleozoic) Caenogastropoda and Opisthobranchia pp. I169-I331. Geological Society of America, and University of Kansas Press.

A Second Look at Scallops

In a post that appeared at this site over eight years ago, I described some of the distinctive features of the Pectinoidea, the group of bivalves commonly known as scallops. It's time to look in a bit more detail at some of the points mentioned in that post.

Fossil of Pernopecten, the earliest scallop genus, from ammonit.ru.

Pectinoidea, in the sense recognised by Waller (2006), first appear in the fossil record way back in the late Devonian. They were probably derived from earlier members of the Aviculopectinoidea, an extinct group of bivalves that closely resemble scallops in their overall appearance and were included in the Pectinoidea by many earlier authors (such as in the 1969 Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology volume on bivalves). However, the shell ligament of aviculopectinoids was reinforced by aragonite fibres (a primitive feature for bivalves) rather than having the specialised rubbery core found in pectinoids. As such, aviculopectinoids would have lacked the swimming abilities of true scallops. The Palaeozoic pectinoids belong to a single genus, Pernopecten, that possesses a number of features such as details of the shell crystalline structure that indicate a position outside the pectinoid crown group. In the early Triassic, Pernopecten begat the family Entolioididae that includes the ancestors of living pectinoids.

As mentioned in the previous post, four pectinoid families survive to the present day: the Pectinidae, Propeamussiidae, Entoliidae and Spondylidae. The first three families diverged in the early Triassic. Spondylids (usually classified in a single genus, Spondylus) were not to appear until the mid-Jurassic and Waller (2006) argued for their derivation from within the Pectinidae. The Pectinidae are otherwise distinguished from other pectinoids by a structure called the ctenolium. This is a row of teeth that develops on the shell in the gap between the disc and one of the auricles (the triangular 'wings' at the top of the shell). During the earlier part of the scallop's life, when it lives attached to the ocean bottom by a byssus (what in mussels we call the 'beard'), the ctenolium functions to hold the byssus threads in place and help stop the shell from twisting. In those pectinid species that lack a byssus in the latter part of their life, the ctenolium may end up getting overgrown by the expanding shell and disappearing, but all pectinids (ignoring the aforementioned Spondylus question) have a ctenolium for at least part of their life.

The propeamussiid Cyclopecten secundus, copyright Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

The Pectinidae is the largest scallop family in the present day, followed by the Propeamussiidae. The Entoliidae were diverse during the Mesozoic but declined dramatically after the end of the Cretaceous (I'm not clear whether or not their decline was a direct part of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction). Indeed, entoliids are completely unknown from the fossil record between the Palaeocene and the late Pleistocene; like the tuatara, it might be that the post-Mesozoic survival of entoliids could have gone completely unrecognised were it not for the single surviving relictual genus.

In the earlier post, I implied that propeamussiids lack the eyes and guard tentacles of other pectinids; it turns out that this was a mistake on my part. Many propeamussiids found in the deep sea do indeed lack these features but they are present in shallow-water propeamussiids. It appears that these features are ancestrally common to all crown-group pectinoids but have been lost as an adaptation to life below the photic zone. The anatomy and lifestyle of many propeamussiids remains poorly known but those species that have been investigated have simplified gills compared to pectinids. The filaments of the gills are free rather than being connected by ciliary junctions. The lips of the mantle are also simplified, lacking the complex lobes found in pectinids. These features may be related to the carnivorous diet of many propeamussiids that feed on zooplankton rather than smaller phytoplankton and organic particles.

REFERENCE

Waller, T. R. 2006. Phylogeny of families in the Pectinoidea (Mollusca: Bivalvia): importance of the fossil record. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 148 (3): 313–342.

A Mystery Ammonoid

Münster's (1834) figure of Goniatites hybridus.

Looks like I drew another dud. For today;s semi-random post, I ended up tasking myself to write something about the Devonian ammonoid genus Heminautilinus. But as it turns out, there simply isn't that much to say about this genus, and what there is isn't really worth saying.

Heminautilinus was established as a genus by A. Hyatt in 1884. He diagnosed it as including "species with whorls similar to those of Anarcestes, but with angular lateral lobes in the adults", and designated George de Münster's (1834) Goniatites hybridus as type species on the basis of that author's original figure. The problem is that Münster's figure is apparently not very reliable; the original specimen was only fragmentary and Münster himself expressed uncertainty as to just what section of the ammonoid conch he had on hand. So Hyatt's assumption that Münster's species retained some juvenile features to maturity should not be considered reliable.

As a result, Hyatt's genus seems to have been pretty roundly ignored. Those authors who have made some speculation as to its identity have suggested that it is probably synonymous with some better known genus such as Cheiloceras or Imitoceras. This might present something of an issue because either one of these genera was published more recently than 1884, meaning that Heminautilinus should be considered the senior name. Because there would be little to be gained from replacing a familiar name with one that is all but forgotten, it seems most likely that, even if Heminautilinus' identity could be reliably established, it would be somehow suppressed. As such, Heminautilinus seems doomed to remain in obscurity.

REFERENCES

Hyatt, A. 1883–1884. Genera of fossil cephalopods. Boston Soc. Nat. History, Proc. 22: 253–338.

Münster, G. de. 1834. Mémoire sur les clymènes et les goniatites du calcaire de transition du Fichtelgebirge Annales des Sciences Naturelles, seconde série, Zoologie 1: 65–99, pls 1–6.

The Litiopids: Small Sea-Snails among the Weeds

I may have commented before that biodiversity tends to increase as one moves to a smaller scale. If I haven't, I certainly should have. The number of small representatives of a group will almost always be greater than the number of large ones. And if one considers the molluscs, for instance, the diversity of large, eye-catching species is considerably smaller is considerably smaller than the diversity of the micro-mollusks that usually go unnoticed.

Litiopids Alaba virgata crawling about on seagrass, copyright Ria Tan.

The Litiopidae are a group of marine gastropods that are found living among and feeding on seaweeds and seagrasses; though little recognised, they can be very abundant. They have high-spired, conical, translucent shells that reach about an inch in length in the largest species, but seem to be more commonly less than a centimetre. They belong among the larger gastropod clade known as the Cerithioidea and can be difficult to distinguish from other members of this clade by their shells alone. Most members of the Litiopidae are placed within the genera Litiopa and Alaba.

The soft anatomy of the family is more distinctive (Houbrick 1987). Litiopids have a long, narrow foot with a median slit in the rear part of the underside marking the opening of a large mesopodial mucous gland. The sides of the foot carry several epipodial tentacles; in other gastropods with such tentacles, they provide a sensory function. A pair of long tentacles is also present on the head, which is produced into an extensible bilobed snout. A pair of small eyes is present at the base of the tentacles.

Soft anatomy of Alaba incerta, from Houbrick (1987).

Litiopids glide about on the underwater vegetation at some speed; they are also able to glide upside-down on the water surface, hanging from the surface tension. The trail of mucus laid down by the mesopodial mucous gland functions like the drag-line laid down by a spider. If the animal finds itself torn away from its substrate, the mucous strand tethers it in place, and it can then haul itself back into place.

REFERENCES

Houbrick, R. S. 1987. Anatomy of Alaba and Litiopa (Prosobranchia: Litiopidae): systematic implications. Nautilus 101 (1): 9–18.

The Arms of an Ammonite

The ammonoids are one of the most characteristic animal groups of the late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. During their time on this earth, they were one of the most diverse and abundant groups of mollusks around. But as with other mollusks, their fossil record is overwhelmingly dominated by the hard shells, with little direct evidence of the softer parts of the animal. So what did the rest of an ammonoid look like?

A typical ammonite Asteroceras obtusum, copyright Dlloyd.

Ammonoids belong to the cephalopods, and hence to the same group of mollusks as modern octopods, squids and nautilus. Indeed, it is generally accepted that ammonoids were more closely related to octopods and squid than nautilus. As such, we can safely take as a starting assumption that those features shared by modern cephalopods were also present in ammonoids, such as a muscular siphon for propelling the animal, and an array of arms or tentacles surrounding a central mouth. But how many tentacles did ammonoids have? Squid and octopods have eight or ten arms, but nautilus have many more, about ninety. Because nautilus bear a superficial resemblance to early cephalopods in retaining an external shell, it has been tempting to assume that they are more primitive than octopods and squid, but there are good reasons to believe that the supernumerary tentacles of nautilus are a derived peculiarity of that group. Arm development in cephalopod embryos begins from ten original buds in both nautilus and squid, with these buds becoming divided in nautilus (Klug & Lehmann 2015), suggesting that the lower number could be the more primitive. With ammonoids on the squid line rather than the nautilus line as mentioned above, it seems likely that they retained the primitive arm number like their sister group. In their review of preserved ammonoid soft-tissue remains, Klug & Lehmann (2015) noted that there is only a single known fossil ammonoid (going by the memorable name of GSUB [Geosciences Collection, University of Bremen] C5836) that might include preserved arm tissue, but the area in question shows little more than a tarry smear. Trace fossils have been used to argue for a low tentacle number in orthocerids, a group of Palaeozoic cephalopods commonly believed to include the ancestors of both ammonoids and squid, but again the evidence is not enough to be conclusive.

If we do presume that ammonoids had a squid- or octopus-like number of tentacles, can we then interpret ammonoids as basically a squid in a coiled shell? This may be the most common representation of such animals:

Unfortunately for Akane's purposes, ammonites may not have provided much in the way of good eating. Whereas the fossil record of ammonoid tentacles themselves is next to nonexistent, we do have a bit more evidence about the arrangement of an ammonoid's mouthparts. Living cephalopods usually have a hardened beak at the opening of the mouth, with the ribbon-like radula sitting directly behind it. The majority of tearing and crushing of food is done by the beak; the radula mostly functions to pull food particles back into the gullet. In basal ammonoids, the beak was more or less similar to that of a recent cephalopod, but in the derived ammonites* it became quite modified. Ammonites possessed a broad structure near the opening of the body chamber that is called an anaptychus or aptychus according to its configuration (though just to confuse matters, the term 'aptychus' seems to sometimes be used to cover both types). An 'anaptychus' was a single chitinous, semi-circular plate; an 'aptychus' was a calcified, bivalved arrangement. The aptychi were not directly attached to the main shell and may commonly be found as isolated fossils. Examination of aptychi that have been preserved still in their original body chamber has lead to the widely held conclusion that they represent a modification of the original lower jaw of the beak. Meanwhile, the upper jaw became reduced and weakened in ammonites with aptychi (Tanabe et al. 2015).

*A quick explanation about 'ammonoid' versus 'ammonite': 'ammonoids' are a particular group of shelled cephalopods that first appeared during the Devonian. 'Ammonites' are a particular clade within the ammonoids including most of the Mesozoic species (a small number of non-ammonite ammonoids survived into the Triassic). So all ammonites are ammonoids, but not all ammonoids are ammonites.

Specimen of Neochetoceras with aptychus in place, from here.

Because they often have a similar configuration to the opening of the ammonite's shell, the aptychi have often been interpreted as functioning as an operculum for when the animal retracted itself into the body cavity, presenting a tough barrier to any would-be predator. Certainly the reduced upper jaw meant that they could not function as a beak to bite into food (though some Late Cretaceous ammonites did exhibit a re-enlargement of the upper jaw and may have regained their bite). However, if aptychi functioned as opercula then the tentacles of ammonites could not have sat in quite same arrangement as in modern cephalopods. They could not have completely surrounded the mouth because then they would have prevented the operculum from closing. Perhaps some of the lower tentacles were lost, or perhaps the base of the circle became divided. Some authors have argued that aptychi were jaw structures only, with no operculum function, but I confess I find it difficult to understand their purpose in that case.

That most ammonoids were not subjecting their food to strenuous chewing is also indicated by the structure of the radula: where known, the majority of ammonoids had radulae with high, slender teeth more suited to grasping than rasping (Keupp et al. 2016). The overall indication is that most ammonoids were probably micropredators, feeding on small plankton such as crustaceans; where possible stomach contents have been identified in ammonoid fossils, they have also supported this conclusion. The modern nautilus has a similar diet, and ammonoid arms possibly did resemble nautilus tentacles in being short and slender rather than long and muscular (though at least one author has discussed the possibility of ammonoid arms being expanded into broad fans for the capture of plankton). The Late Jurassic ammonite Aspidoceras had a much more robust, powerful radula than is known for other ammonoids but may provide something of an exception to prove the rule: its stomach contents are dominated by the pelagic crinoid Saccocoma, suggesting that it was still a planktivore even if it was tackling tougher prey than its relatives (Keupp et al. 2016).

A speculative reconstruction of an ammonite with filter-feeding arms, copyright sethd2725. Despite its highly conjectural elements, in some ways this is one of the better ammonite reconstructions I've seen. Most have too many arms, too robust arms, or (arguably worst of all) show the aptychus articulating dorsally in the manner of a nautilus' hood (Edit: Turns out I made an error here; see the bottom of this post for an explanation).

So to sum up, ammonoids probably had only a small number of tentacles, no more than ten at the most. They were probably slight affairs, suited for sweeping small or poorly motile food objects out of the water rather than grabbing and manipulating struggling prey. A planktivorous habit for ammonoids would also seem to fit with their predominance when they were around; after all, there's no shortage of plankton in the sea.

REFERENCES

Keupp, H., R. Hoffmann, K. Stevens & R. Albersdörfer. 2016. Key innovations in Mesozoic ammonoids: the multicuspidate radula and the calcified aptychus. Palaeontology 59 (6): 775–791.

Klug, C., & J. Lehmann. 2015. Soft part anatomy of ammonoids: reconstructing the animal based on exceptionally preserved specimens and actualistic comparisons. In: Klug, C., et al. (eds) Ammonoid Paleobiology: From Anatomy to Ecology pp. 507–529. Springer Science.

Tanabe, K., I. Kruta & N. H. Landman. 2015. Ammonoid buccal mass and jaw apparatus. In: Klug, C., et al. (eds) Ammonoid Paleobiology: From Anatomy to Ecology pp. 429–484. Springer Science.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

To those without much of a background in taxonomy, the various rules governing the naming of organisms can seen frustratingly byzantine and laborious. "Surely," they think to themselves as they despairingly attempt to come to grips with concepts of holotypes and lectotypes, synonyms and homonyms, "there must be an easier way of doing this". Nevertheless, the easiest way to develop an appreciation for just how valuable it is to have a set of rules governing nomenclature is to attempt to deal with anything dating back to the days before such rules were established. Settle back, readers, while I tell you a tale. Pour yourself a drink. You're going to hate this.

Collonista glareola, a species that just might be related to the subject of this post, copyright Huang, Fu & Poppe.

These days, it is generally accepted that before a new name can enter general use, it should be clearly established in some form of formal, widely-accessible publication just to what it is that the name is supposed to refer. Back in the day, however, this was not always the case. A century or two ago, the communities of researchers working on a particular group of organisms were often small, and it was not uncommon for names to effectively spread through personal correspondence or word of mouth alone. One naturalist might refer to a new genus he had come to recognise in a letter to another, and the latter naturalist may then assign his own species to that genus without the first naturalist ever publishing a formal description. At the time, this might not be seen as much of an issue: after all, if there was ever any question as to the first naturalist's original intent, surely it could be clarified by simply writing to him personally?

The name Leptothyra seems to have been established in this kind of way in the mid-1800s by the American naturalist James Graham Cooper for a genus of small marine gastropods (belonging to the vetigastropods, related to the top shells and cat's-eyes) found on the coast of California. In 1871, W. H. Dall attributed the name to an unpublished manuscript of Cooper's and cited the type species as Linnaeus' Turbo sanguineus, a Mediterranean species to which Cooper had also attributed specimens from the Pacific. As it happens, Turbo sanguineus was already the type species for an earlier genus name, Homalopoma, so Dall's 'Leptothyra' would be considered invalid and give precedence to Homalopoma. However, in 1869 the name Leptothyra had been used by W. H. Pease for L. costata, a species from Hawaii, without direct reference to any other species (thus making L. costata the effective type species of Leptothyra). Subsequent authors often considered 'Leptothyra Pease' to be a separate genus from Homalopoma/'Leptothyra Dall'. At least one author who did not, Henry A. Pilsbry (1888), nevertheless used the name Leptothyra under the mistaken belief that the name Homalopoma was preoccupied. Over time, numerous species both living and fossil from around the Pacific were assigned to Leptothyra in one way or another.

It was not until over a century later that Coan (1986) pointed out that the name Leptothyra had appeared in print even earlier than Pease's usage. Cooper himself had used the name in a list of Californian molluscs in 1867. Even though Cooper's list lacked any descriptive details, this counts as enough to validate the name because he included species for which descriptions had already been published under other genera. One of these was Turbo sanguineus, which Coan officially designated as type species and fixed Leptothyra's status as an invalid later name for Homalopoma.

Which leaves open the question of what one should call the genus formerly known as 'Leptothyra Pease'. It doesn't help matters that Pease's 'Leptothyra costata' has apparently never been illustrated and its identity has been open to question. Iredale (1918) proposed the name Collonista for use with species previously included in Leptothyra, stating that the latter "proves to have been first published by Pease in connexion with a juvenile shell of a different genus", but gave no further elaboration or explanation how he reached that conclusion. The online resource WoRMS lists L. costata as a junior synonym of the widespread Pacific species Collonista verruca, but I have been unable to find where that synonymy was published. Nevertheless, any sort of replacement name for 'Leptothyra Pease' seems like it would be misguided at best. It is unlikely that L. costata represents any genus otherwise unknown and, even without any explicit statement to the effect, it is quite possible that Pease only intended to assign his species to Cooper's manuscript genus rather than establish a new genus of his own. Any concept of a genus Leptothyra is best left to sink into the annals of history.

REFERENCES

Coan, E. 1986. Some additional taxonomic unites that first appear in publications by J. G. Cooper. Nautilus 100 (1): 30–32.

Cooper, J. G. 1867. Geographical catalogue of the Mollusca found west of the Rocky Mountains, between latitudes 33° and 49° north. Geological Survey of California: San Francisco.

Dall, W. H. 1871. Descriptions of sixty new forms of mollusks from the west coast of North America and the North Pacific Ocean, with notes on others already described. American Journal of Conchology 7 (2): 93–160, pls 13–16.

Iredale, T. 1918. Molluscan nomenclatural problems and solutions.—No. 1. Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London 13 (1–2): 28–40.

Pease, W. H. 1869. Descriptions of new species of marine Gasteropodae inhabiting Polynesia. American Journal of Conchology 5 (2): 64–79.

Who Knows Which Way the Water Flows?

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Dorsal and lateral views of specimens of Trenella bifrons, from Parkhaev (2001).

There is no question that the molluscs are one of the most significant groups of animals in the marine environment. And thanks to the production by many species of mollusc of a hard shell, they are also one of the best-known groups in the fossil record. A rich and detailed picture of molluscan evolution is available to us as far back as the earliest Cambrian. But, of course, the further back in time we go the more questions we have about what the picture means. And it is in the earliest part of their history that the picture becomes the most opaque.

The Trenellidae are part of that early picture. This family of molluscs is known from the early Cambrian (Parkhaev 2002). They are part of the assemblage of early molluscs referred to as the helcionelloids, whose overall position in the molluscan family tree is very much open to question. Helcionelloids are simple, more or less cap-shaped or cone-shaped shells that are usually also tiny. The type species of the Trenellidae, Trenella bifrons, for instance, is only about 1 to 1.5 millimetres along the longest axis, and only one-half to one millimetre tall (Parkhaev 2001). This all adds up to a general shortage of morphological details that might help us pin down which, if any, modern molluscan groups helcionelloids are connected to. Possession of a undivided dorsal shell has lead many to compare them to gastropods. Others have pointed to the monoplacophorans like the modern Neopilina. In both cases, though, the resemblance is fairly superficial and confirming things one way or another would depend on identifying features of the soft anatomy, such as torsion, that are difficult if not impossible to infer from features of the shell alone.

Within the helcionelloids, trenellids are characterised by having the lower rim of one end of the shell's long axis drawn out into a siphonal groove. It seems likely that this groove was somehow involved in the passage of water around the gill(s), but whether its position indicates the front end or the back end of the shell, and whether it was used to draw water in or expel water out, depends again on what each author expects its original soft anatomy to have been. Unfortunately, evidence for the latter in trenellids is almost completely non-existent; while muscle scars have been identified in some helcionelloids, they remain unknown for this family.

The Trenellidae are closely related to, and probably include the ancestors of, the Yochelcionellidae in which the siphonal groove become raised and closed ventrally, turning it into a snorkel-like structure (one yochelcionellid, Yochelcionella daleki, has been featured on this site before). However, comparing trenellids to yochelcionellids raises something of a question in my mind. In general, mollusc shells grow through secretion from the mantle around the shell's rim only, meaning that once shell growth has passed a certain section the mollusc usually cannot go back and rearrange it. Assuming that helcionelloids grew in the usual molluscan manner, surely yochelcionellids would have gone through a stage in their development before the lower part of the 'snorkel' was closed off where they looked a heck of a lot like a trenellid? Is it even possible to distinguish a mature trenellid from a juvenile yochelcionellid?

REFERENCES

Parkhaev, P. Yu. 2001. Trenella bifrons: a new helcionelloid mollusk from the Lower Cambrian of South Australia. Paleontological Journal 35 (6): 585–588.

Parkhaev, P. Yu. 2002. Phylogenesis and the system of the Cambrian univalved mollusks. Paleontological Journal 36 (1): 25–36.