Community composition of the infaunal bivalve fauna of the St. Lucie Estuary and southern Indian River Lagoon, eastern Florida was sampled quarterly for 10 years as part of a long-term benthic monitoring program. A total of 38,514 bivalves of 137 taxa were collected and identified. We utilized this data, along with sediment samples and environmental measurements gathered concurrently, to assess...

Several bivalve species produce byssus threads to provide attachment to substrates, with mechanical properties highly variable among species. Here, we examined the distal section of byssal threads produced by a range of bivalve species (Mytilus edulis, Mytilus trossulus, Mytilus galloprovincialis, Mytilus californianus, Pinna nobilis, Perna perna, Xenostrobus securis, Brachidontes solisianus an...

BACKGROUND Several clades of bivalve molluscs have invaded freshwaters at various times throughout Phanerozoic history. The most successful freshwater clade in the modern world is the Unionoida. Unionoids arose in the Triassic Period, sometime after the major extinction event at the End-Permian boundary and are now widely distributed across all continents except Antarctica. Until now, no freshw...

The response of bivalves to their abiotic environment has been widely studied in relation to hydroenvironmental conditions, sediment types and sediment grain sizes. However, the possible role of varying geoenvironmental conditions in their habitats remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the hardness of the surficial intertidal sediments varies by a factor of 20-50 due to suction developm...

The paleoecology of tropical Podocarpaceae is reviewed for Africa and Southeast Asia. The family first appeared in the Triassic of Gondwana, after which it diversified through the Cretaceous and earliest Tertiary, and although some Northern Hemisphere Jurassic records are known, it has essentially remained a southern or southernderived family until the present day. It seems to show a preference...

The Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum is one of the most important commercial bivalve species consumed in China. Evaluated metal burden in bivalve molluscs can pose potential risks to public health as a result of their frequent consumption. In this study, concentrations of 10 trace elements (Cu, Zn, Mn, Se, Ni, Cd, Cr, Pb, Hg and As) were determined in samples of the bivalve Ruditapes philipp...

Despite the figure of complete bivalve mitochondrial genomes keeps growing, an assessment of the general features of these genomes in a phylogenetic framework is still lacking, despite the fact that bivalve mitochondrial genomes are unusual under different aspects. In this work, we constructed a dataset of one hundred mitochondrial genomes of bivalves to perform the first systematic comparative...

A pluridisciplinary approach was used to define iodine immobilization mechanisms by biocarbonates in a natural marine carbonate-bearing clayey formation. For this purpose, different techniques of observation (optical microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM), cathodoluminescence (CL)) and of analyses (infrared spectrometry (IR), electron microprobe (EPMA), spatially resolved synchrotron-ba...

INTRODUCTION This research aimed to identify and quantify potentially pathogenic Vibrio from different cultivations of bivalve shellfish in the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and water regions in the South Bay, as well as correlate the incidence of these microorganisms with the physicochemical parameters of marine waters. METHODS Between October 2008 and March 2009, 60 oyster and seawater s...