Figure 1: Selected hypotheses of extant molluscan relationships and relevant taxa. Figure 2: Phylogram of the RAxML maximum likelihood analysis of the big matrix (216,402 amino acids) under the WAG+Γ ...

The story of how animals first set foot out of the water and onto land just became more complex. Fossil evidence reveals that molluscs may have been among the first animals to spend time out of the ...

Usually, the individuals of a population of marine species that have the potential to disperse over long distances all share a similar genetic composition. Yet every now and then, at small, localized ...

If the clams could speak, what would they say? Surely we all ask ourselves this question every day. But a French startup is going further, allowing bivalves like clams, mussels and oysters to act as ...

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. Kerry Walton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would ...

Slimy and often sluggish they may be, but some molluscs deserve credit for their brains – which, it now appears, they managed to evolve independently, four times. The mollusc family includes the most ...

Researchers believe rising sea temperatures are to blame for the plummeting number of invertebrates such as molluscs and sea urchins at Rottnest Island off Western Australia, with some species having ...

Previous studies have suggested an involvement of catecholamines in the control of several larval behaviors, such as feeding, locomotion, and induction of settling and metamorphosis. In the present ...

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, ...

Why don’t animal’s use wheels in locomotion? Why aren’t blue whales bigger? Why are there no freshwater starfish? Why are there no tree dwelling cephalopods? Why can’t my dog make a decent cocktail?

It looks like something out of a Salvador Dali dreamscape but this bizarre sea creature, which lived about 500 million years ago, turns out to have been the mother of all squids – indeed it is the ...