Hehe fortunately I care not about the clout, only about spreading the clam gospel
Eclamgelist. He/him If you like #clamFacts check out my blog (profile name)
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Hehe fortunately I care not about the clout, only about spreading the clam gospel
When the top post in your clam fact thread is actually about a snail
Darwin was a geologist first. He realized he needed to investigate mechanisms driving the history of life to be able to be able to explain his geological observations
Hehe clam adjacent. I've long been fascinated by Julia snails, maybe I'll write a blog!
The amazing clearance rate of freshwater mussels does leave them vulnerable though. When pulses of sediment passes through, such as from wildfire-linked erosion, their gills are easily overwhelmed by the particles, smothering them californiawaterblog.com/2023/02/26/w... (243)
Clam shrimps are actually several orders of branchiopod crustaceans: they were thought to be one order until genomic comparisons showed some subgroups were more closely related to the water fleas than to others, thus necessitating the group to be split up.
Ah yeah, I was definitely not referring to them as a formal phyletic group! Even more convergence towards clams!
Freshwater mussels (Unionidae) are important to ensure water quality in rivers! Each mussel can clear up to 2-4 L per hour depending on species! These clearance rates can go up as flow levels increase. Unionids are champions at grabbing particles from moving water! (242) youtu.be/s_CaNfFtHhg?...
We got a good set of options to mix and match: flesh tube, crab, clam. Maybe all the above.
Also not clams but fellow travelers: clam shrimp! An ancient group, with species inhabiting extreme environments like vernal pools where they wait for months drying out, freezing, and exposed to extreme salinity. I enjoyed seeing these California clam shrimp at Jepson Prairie. (241)
On the subject of clams and crabs a student asked me whether bivalved arthropods have evolved more times than ‘crabs’ recently
Alas! They were destroyed in an interstellar war against 22 planets that independently evolved sentient crabs.
Another not-clam fact: Juliidae snails have a hinged shell like clams, entirely by convergent evolution! For ~100 yrs they were only known from fossils and assumed to be clams! The commonality of the hinged form makes me hope there are clamlike aliens out there, waiting to make 1st contact (240)
Not all things with a hinged two-part shell are bivalves! There are, for example, brachiopods, which are not closely related! One way to tell them apart is from their axis of symmetry. For bivalves it is between the valves, while brachs are symmetrical top down! (239)
Freshwater mussel larvae in museum collections offer untapped insights for taxonomy and conservation: doi.org/10.3897/nhcm...
New paper is officially out! Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth. www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...
Class Bivalvia was named by Linnaeus! In 19th-20th centuries it was in vogue to call them "pelecypods" ("axe-foot"), in line with the foot obsession of biology, and bc other groups like brachiopods have 2 valves also. In 1969, scientists put their foot down and brought back the better name! (238)
🎵ha! You don't even know what you're asking me to clam-fess🎵
I posted a fact about disco clams in this thread earlier. They reflect light in a flashing display by rapidly switching the direction of silica nanospheres in the lips of their mantle! Research suggests it's to psych out predators! (237) youtu.be/GRzeNlqnRxU?...
IT'S ADORABLE! New fish species just dropped: the bumpy snailfish at 10,000 ft down in the ocean gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/s...
The bigger the list, the higher the score
Pack the damn court
We'll find out more about his opinion on FSA through upcoming rulings on enforcement of abortion restrictions across state lines
textualism was always a smokescreen. they don't give a shit as long as they get their way
Ha! You probably thought I was done with clam facts! Fat chance! The rear, highest point of a shell is called the umbo. It often includes the beak, which is the oldest part of the shell, originating back to the larval growth of the clam that all growth lines of the shell point back to! (236)
His idea of "success" is for who he classifies as sick and weak to die off. He is a eugenicist
Probably had an LLM write it up
I see way more people with a couple thousand followers. With twitter it felt super bimodal: less than a couple hundred or >100,000
He needs you to come back to his preferred right wing network to debate him. As with all reactionaries, he can only react and has no original ideas. He starves without them
I think he also knows what he's doing is wrong. He is working in very bad faith, knows people's lives are on the line and actually wants them to die because he sees them as eugenically disposable. I will vote for any Democrat who pledges to open a criminal investigation of his actions
I agree. And Camacho promoted a more rigorous electrolyte-focused health policy
Dude should be in jail
Gotta hand it to him, he had the smart but evil choice in his hand and he stuck with making dumb choices
The guy really sucks. Ask CA state employees about their opinion of their boss. I'd vote for literally any other Democrat
Sometimes I think it is necessary to remind everyone about the diversity of echinoderm ANUSES! this fossil crinoid with its well armed ANAL CHIMNEY for example!! #echinoday echinoblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-...
I feel a kind of joy at Legacy Centrist Media feeling such anger at us posting over here and not complying with their directives to post on the Ketamine Nazi AI Training Machine
For #FossilFriday, a 2-for-1 special with a Late Cretaceous body fossil (ammonite) bearing tooth traces of a biting mosasaur matching the dental records of _Platecarpus_. Display seen at the U. of Michigan Museum of Natural History (Ann Arbor MI) in June '24. 🧪🦷🕳️ #ichnology
Carnivorous bivalves often live in places where tasty phytoplankton is in short supply. They've evolved to eat larger prey like copepods by feeling them out with their tentacles and engulfing them with their siphon, like some sort of sci-fi predator! (235)
Clams are just cool af. It's a fact. (234)
Dude needs to be jailed for what he's done
#TeamCalcite always and forever. Here's a small taste of calcite's beauty with a look at my personal calcite collection.
Honestly I find myself worried our information system is so screwed up that there will be no swing back up in some demos. In Texas they were calling it God's will when kids were dying of measles. I hope I'm wrong
Survey stakes are in the ground at the San Rafael Valley, where DHS is preparing to wall off the last best corridor in Arizona for jaguars, ocelots & other species. Not a soul in sight.
I am a lifelong black coffee drinker and find it not at all connected to my sexuality or gender. Just absolute nonsense. Anyone who claims so needs to grow up, jfc
I really hate this stuff. As a kid, so much of the policing about what was permissible male behavior or not came as jokes. I wish I could go back and tell little Dan not to listen to them, and just enjoy what I wanted to enjoy
Aligns a lot with climate denial strategies. And tobacco denial. They can always demand more data
Sacred power to keep out the poors
If we ever regain power, we should be charging him with crimes regarding every vaccine preventable death on his watch. He needs to be punished
Nacre (mother of pearl) isn't stable chemically, so fossils with nacre are less common! But in the right conditions we can find pearl fossils, often replaced with calcite like this big pearl from a Cretaceous inoceramid clam, half the size of a golf ball! (233) oceansofkansas.com/Inoceramids....
Yes aragonite is actually my favorite but it usually doesn't make the bracket...not sure why!
If you love clams you gotta vote for calcite! Mussels, scallops, oysters and other bivalve greatest hits all use calcite for their shells!
"Clams" being slang for money came from misunderstanding of Native shell-based goods like wampum, which were more for cultural exchange and memory. However, shells have literally been used as money, such as these Pismo clams during the Great Depression hakaimagazine.com/article-shor... (232)
Many hermit crabs are adapted to live in gastropod shells, but Porcellanopagurus nihonkaiensis is adapted to use bivalve shells as its home! Adapting to use flat clam shells as a shield means less armor, but frees it from the intense competition sometimes seen for empty snail shells! (231)
I used to run into these little assholes all the time when I was cooking for a living. You get them (or one of their relatives) in oysters and clams, so when you shuck enough oysters for a dinner service you get a collection of tiny crabs in your work station.
We had just driven through here a couple weeks ago on the way to Yosemite and read about its history. Eerie that most of it is now gone
In the intertidal, mussels have to survive greater temperature ranges than other bivalves, having been observed to live through brief periods ranging from -10 to 40 °C (14-104 F)! They protect themselves by releasing heat shock proteins to slow denaturing of their proteins (230)
Proud to say I contributed to this effort to simply tell the truth to the American public.
If someone cannot mentally grasp the data, and wouldn't want to accept the data if they could understand it, what's a scientist to do?
I think honestly that they know the game has changed, and they're angling to be the captive opposition
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! (229) woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/2017/04/07/w...
Another key service of clams is bioturbation. If left undisturbed, sediments will trap nutrients and become inhospitable deeper down for many types of life, due to lack of oxygen. When clams dig down and "rework" that dirt, they bring oxygen down and free nutrients from below! (228)
Omg, a post thread as a byssus, genius
Imagining being this guy's dive buddy lol
The production of pseudofeces is considered a major ecosystem service of bivalves. They are clearing the water column, producing sediment which decomposes and releases nutrients. Meanwhile the clearer water has greater supply of light to fuel phytoplankton growth from those nutrients! (227)
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 its valves together! (226)
Periclimenes imperator lives mostly on the outside of its host, but sometimes it inquilinises the sea cucumber's butt. A guy was nice enough to capture all the butts for your reference: www.flickr.com/photos/pacif... Enjoy!
It is a free extra delicacy, often eaten whole!
Pea crabs are common kleptoparasites in many bivalve species, including mussels, living in the gill cavity and picking away at the mussel's hard-earned food. Research has shown that mussels hosting pea crabs grow more slowly and show signs of stress compared to those without (225)
I hope he can be jailed for what he's done
Same genus! Sounds like a nice adaptation for rafting
Interesting! It's the same behaviour of the usually rock-boring Mediterranean Rocellaria dubia when it settles on shells on soft substrates.
When an organism lives inside another organism, it is called inquilinism. Modern giant clams have shrimp specially adapted to live in their gill cavity. @paleoadiel.bsky.social and colleagues described inquiline shrimp in the body cavity of giant Cretaceous inoceramid bivalves! (224)
Yes, rudist paleoecology is fascinating. Sometimes they were building reefs, sometimes looking more like sediment-supporting oysters, sometimes patch reefs interspersed with corals as @rowanmartindale.bsky.social has described! pubs.geoscienceworld.org/sepm/palaios...
Can these people be criminally charged if there is a change of power in 2029? What's the statute of limitations on willfully violating a judge's order?
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 chimneys of cemented shell fragments once they grow past the thickness of their host shell. (223)
If I were to go back in time to see one clam, it would be my dream to go back to the Cretaceous and see Titanosarcolites, a rudist bivalve that grew like giant 2 m wide croissants! (222)
(:) (:) (:) :D :D :D
Hehe yep!
Aw thank you! (:)
Thorny oysters (Spondylus) grow their spines at up to 1 mm per day. While thr spines provide some limited deterrence against predators, they are thought to be more effective at recruiting other organisms to live on the shell and provide camouflage! (221)
Boring bivalves are the best and also I now have a colleague who makes the "I thought they were all boring" joke every single time he sees me 😂😭🙄
Boring bivalves are actually quite interesting! The ability to bore into rock has evolved multiple times in bivalves. @spissatella.bsky.social found that boring bivalves have a greater variety of forms than their non-boring counterparts! (220)
The place the adductor muscle attaches to the shell is analogous to our tendons, and usually leaves a visible scar on the shell, which is sometimes pigmented! Some species have two points of attachment, and some just one. (219)
Giant clams make a growth line every day, controlled by their partnership with photosynthetic algae. @nielsjdewinter.bsky.social found daily chemical patterns in the shells of Cretaceous rudist bivalves, suggesting they too may have harbored algae! (218)
Darwin Award
journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...
Wow interesting! If I ever pass through Olympia you know where I'll be stopping to buy merch
Some nice scicomm on their website! www.evergreen.edu/student-life...
On the internet, no one knows you're a dog!
When a clam's shell is fractured, it immediately begins patching the crack. This is often done with a different mineral material called vaterite, which is quick and cheap to make. In one study with mussels they found the repaired shell was actually stronger than it was before the crack! (217)
Happy as a Quahog with a six pack of 'Gansett.
There is not enough clam-related content in the world. My life's work is to change that
the guy must be charged and prosecuted if we ever regain power
be the poster you want to see in the world
soup 4 weeks
My thoughts are that it's awesome! bsky.app/profile/dant...
