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A slug on a wall in Kanagawa, Japan.. Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc.The word slug is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a small internal shell, particularly sea slugs and semi-slugs (this is in contrast to the common name snail, which applies to ...
In contrast to many other mollusc classes, aplacophorans have no shell, and are instead covered by aragonitic sclerites (calcareous spicules), which can be solid or hollow. These spicules can be arranged perpendicular to one another within the cuticle to form a skeleton, stick up to form a palisade, or can lie flat against the cuticle.
The shell ranges from 3 mm to 37 mm in diameter depending on species. Like in chitons , the head is poorly defined, and there are no eyes. The mouth is located within the animal's undeveloped head in front of its single large foot and contains a radula , a defining characteristic of the mollusca.
A review article found that chondroitin sulfate and related compounds found in sea cucumbers can help in treating joint-pain, and that dried sea cucumber is "medicinally effective in suppressing arthralgia". [45] Another study suggested that sea cucumbers contain all the fatty acids necessary to play a potentially active role in tissue repair. [46]
The mystery mollusks are hermaphrodites, which include both male and female reproductive organs. When it is time to release eggs, they descend and use their foot to temporarily attach to the seafloor.
All known modern forms are shell-less: only some extinct primitive forms possessed valves. The group comprises the two clades Solenogastres (Neomeniomorpha) and Caudofoveata (Chaetodermomorpha), which between them contain 28 families and about 320 species. The aplacophorans are traditionally considered ancestral to the other mollusc classes.
Arca noae is found in the Mediterranean Sea. It was once common in the Adriatic, but in 1949/50 there was a sudden unexplained, catastrophic decline in numbers. Since then, populations have been creeping back upwards, and in 2002, densities of up to 13 individuals per square metre (11 square feet) were recorded.
Murex is a genus of medium to large sized predatory tropical sea snails.These are carnivorous marine gastropod molluscs in the family Muricidae, commonly called "murexes" or "rock snails".