On Wednesday @ 12 Pacific time I'll be joining my fave mag Bay Nature for a talk about salinity in SF Bay! 🧂🌊 Register at this link: free for members or $5 for nonmembers ! https://baynature.app.neoncrm.com/nx/portal/neonevents/events?path=%2Fportal%2Fevents%2F27375

[Spot the made up conchological jargon in this list: umbo, tooth, auricle, resilifer, ligament, beak, chondrophore, commissure, lunule, escutcheon, pallial sinus. #clamFacts] Psych, they're all real, lol. See a glossary here and impress your friends! […]

New research finds that despite lacking a centralized brain, sea urchins show a surprising degree of nervous system organization, with a diversity of cell types, each with a different specialization, and a complex system of light-detecting cells as well. I often assert to people that as we've […]

@dantheclamman Even in historic times oyster reefs in places like the Chesapeake Bay were much larger than currently. There are some efforts to bring them back underway but on a pretty small scale to date. In researching this post I learned that Maryland once had an Oyster Navy (per […]

A reef is a sedimentary structure supported by the skeletons of living organisms. Corals are the most famous reef builders, but oysters build them too! Cretaceous rudists, Jurassic lithiotids and bivalves from other time intervals of the past actually rivaled […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Bivalve shells are often colored, either by optically active pigments in the crystal structure of the shell itself, or by the protein layer on top (periostracum) being colored. Yellow and brown are most common, with green and blue being most unusual. As with […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Concurring with The Onion: There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn from Clams I wrote an article concurring with the recent Onion article: "Biologists Announce There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn From Clams" […]

Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter accurately portays how much walruses love to eat bivalves. But walruses mostly hunt in deeper waters than where oysters live, pulling their tongue into their mouth like a piston to suck clams out of the shell. One […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Unlike their gastropod and cephalopod relatives, there are no known pelagic bivalves that remain in the water column throughout their lives! Many bivalves start as planktonic when they are veligers (larvae), but they all eventually settle down. There are fossil […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

It is common for aquaculture to triploid oysters as their stock! They have three sets of chromosomes, rather than the usual two, rendering them sterile. This means their body growth is faster, because they don't put energy into reproduction! A triploid oyster is […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

In October 2024: golden mussels were first detected at the Port of Stockton. They likely came in the ballast water of a ship, coming from one of the places they've previously invaded. In the year since detection they have rode the CA aqueduct all the way down to […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Can bivalves be domesticated? It turns out that yes, farmed oysters have systematic differences in their genomes compared to their wild counterparts! Farmed oyster larvae have been found to be less hardy in the face of starvation (we've selected for rapid growth instead of flexibility in their […]

NEWS FLASH: We have CLAMS living on campus! As part of last week's Sustainability Weed at #LincolnUniversityNZ, our freshwater ecology tutor Elysia Harcombe did some kick sampling along a farm ditch. Yes, she found clams! It's the first record on #inaturalist of clams on campus, or anywhere in […]

Zachsia zenkewitschi is an extremely cool and strange shipworm that bores into the rhizomes of seagrass on the coasts of Japan and Russia. The females are ~1 cm long and do the burrowing. The males stay larval sized and the female keeps a "harem" of them tucked […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

@dantheclamman Whodunnit? It was the mussel, on the dinner plate, with the dinoflagellate.

In July 1927, over 100 people in San Francisco were sickened from eating mussels. Six died. All experienced loss of feeling and tingling starting as little as a few minutes after their meal, which progressed in some patients into paralysis. There was mass terror […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

I refer to clams as a cross between a cow and a vacuum cleaner. And like a cow, some species of clams fart out a fair bit of methane, due to methanogenic microbes in their guts! Their farts may account for ~10% of methane released in some environments. So to answer a question I'm sure many of […]

If a clam claps its valves in the sea and no one is around, does it make a sound? Actually, yes. Researchers were able to use a sensitive mic to pick up the sound of scallops "coughing" as they close their valves, expelling water. It could have use as a […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Clam gardens have been used by Pacific Northwest native tribes for thousands of years. They build rock walls to trap sediment, at the right height to be immersed at high tide but also exposed for harvest at low tide. This encourages burrowing clams to settle in […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Class Bivalvia was named by Linnaeus in 1758! During the 19th-20th centuries, it was in vogue to call them Pelecypoda ("axe-feet"), in line with the broader, somewhat bizarre foot obsession of biology. It was seen as better acknowledging other inverts that also have hinged two-valved shells […]

@dantheclamman oh my god 😍🪩💫🪐✨ https://youtu.be/GRzeNlqnRxU?si=MkPmSsGg_iW8xdvz

@dantheclamman @soaproot crap. The link to the Lyme Regis Museum's website about Buckland's Dinosaur Poo Table no longer works. (The link isn't in the PLOS article you linked to; it's in the smithsonianmag article the PLOS article links to.)

@dantheclamman OK, since we're on fossils, is there any known fossilized #pseudofeces ?

Nacre (mother of pearl) isn't very stable chemically, so fossils with nacre are less common, because they dissolve during the millions of years exposed to heat, pressure and fluids in the earth's crust. But in the right conditions, we can find pearl fossils […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

#pseudofeces could be a useful metaphor for more than one feature of modern life. @dantheclamman

@dantheclamman Last time I went to a science museum there was a nice clam shell on display and it made for a modestly viral post on the clam facts tag. I have yet to encounter a museum display for the #pseudofeces tag but that just means there need to be more clam facts in the world!

Clams of course produce poop from digested material, but they also produce pseudofeces from all the stuff picked up by their gills that they don't eat. The pseudofeces is packaged up in mucus. Both the poop and not-poop are shot out the siphon when the clam claps […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

When clams are buried, they will frantically try to dig to reach the surface. Their digging leaves impressions, creating trace fossils called "Lockeia" which are marks of ancient storm deposits and of clams being buried alive! Spooky! […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Yo dawg we heard you like shells...the Stimpson chimney clam is a shell in a shell. These little bivalves bore into loose shells, building little igloo like chimneys of cemented shelly fragments once they grow past the thickness of their host shell! #clamfacts

The file shells are very unusual bivalves. Some can give disco displays using reflective particles in their flesh, believed to confuse predators. They have a lot of overlap with scallops in being able to swim and many species having eyes, leading them to […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

I have a stuffed plush clam but it only had two eyes so today I corrected that.

I continue to be disappointed that there is no .clam domain for purchase

Jingle shells are a family of very thin, flat bivalves that live attached to surfaces. The mangrove jingle shell lives attached to the lower leaves of mangroves! It is not actually air living, and still needs to be immersed by the tides occasionally to survive […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

I've been reading about clams intensively for over a decade and I still learn new stuff every day. Every new clam fact is like a puzzle piece. Some fit in satisfyingly with other clam facts. Some make me go wtf, I have no idea where this fits, I'll set it to the side and maybe it'll make sense […]

When a whale dies and falls to the seafloor, its lipid-rich bones decay and produce a lot of sulfide. Idas washingtonia is a mussel that specializes in colonizing during this "sulfophilic" stage, years after the initial whale fall. Up to tens of thousands of […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

At the California Science Center museum and just found some new (to me) #clamfacts . According to Wikipedia this species lives at thousands of meters below the ocean's surface and gets nutrition from bacteria on its gills which can process hydrogen sulfide from deep sea vents.

Bean clams are famous for jumping to "surf" the waves to stay at the tide line on the beach! Researchers found they're sensitive to the sound frequency of waves breaking, and time their jumps to align with the loudest 20% of waves, to give them the gnarliest shred down the beach! #clamfacts

Greater bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris) at the local lake, with a bonus moth that I didn't realise was there until looking at the photos afterwards. #botany #ukflora #southyorkshire #brownfield

The common piddock, Pholas dactylus, is one of the few known bioluminescent bivalves (though there are assuredly others that just haven't been described), producing flashes of light from a luminescent protein called pholasin when they're disturbed! Aristotle wrote about them, and Pliny noted […]

This is at the redpath museum at mcgill university which i highly recommend to fans of weird dusty little museums full of idiosyncratic labels and obsolete dioramas

There are deep sea Bathymodiolus mussels >1500 m deep that still grow their shells following a tidal schedule, far below depths where tides have influence! Researchers believe deeply conserved genetic traits drive their biological clocks, but much is unknown […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Bivalves can sequester carbon due to their extraction and burial of material from the water column! This varies by location and species, since they also release CO₂ through their respiration, shell formation and turnover of sediment. But invasive clams, which reach harmful densities due to lack […]

I find talking to other scientists so much harder than talking to the public 😩

I once was asked by a kindergartner if clams sleep. I was stumped, and we actually have no idea! We know many bivalves have strong biological clocks, often showing circadian rhythms in activity. But as to whether they sleep? No one knows! #clamfacts

Bivalve gills, also called ctenidia, are made of many fine filaments, which are covered by countless microscopic cilia. The cilia are triggered to beat when the bivalve smells something nice, causing water to flow past. The cilia stick to tasty particles and pass […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Clam chowder of New England and Manhattan varieties traces its origin back to quahog stews made by native peoples of the region. Seafood stews are a *very* old global tradition, and later waves of immigrants brought additions of dairy, potato, and for Manhattan […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Y'all continue to be the most interested in clam facts by far of any socials I share on. I really admire ya. Stay curious!

The word "clam" originated from the Old English "clamm", meaning to bond, fetter, grip or grasp. So essentially, very close to the word "clamp", and describing the ability of the clam to pinch its valves tightly together! #clamfacts

The largest known verified natural pearl weighs 28 kg/61 lb! It was made by a giant clam, and is owned by a Filipino-Canadian man who inherited it through family. Giant clam pearls are not made of nacre (mother of pearl) like the iridescent gemstone pearls, which […] [Original post on scicomm.xyz]

Me waiting til nightfall to find the caterpillars attacking my peppers