Dr. Dan Killam
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dantheclamman.scicomm.xyz.ap.brid.gy
Dr. Dan Killam
@dantheclamman.scicomm.xyz.ap.brid.gy
Environmental scientist and eclamgelist

Provider of #ClamFacts

[bridged from https://scicomm.xyz/@dantheclamman on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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
November 10, 2025 at 10:00 PM
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]
October 30, 2025 at 3:27 PM
@soaproot a lot of them, yes! though periostracum can have a bright golden color just due to coincidental properties of the proteins involved!
October 28, 2025 at 4:08 AM
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]
October 28, 2025 at 1:50 AM
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]
October 20, 2025 at 8:19 PM
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]
October 14, 2025 at 8:34 PM
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]
October 6, 2025 at 7:38 PM
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]
October 4, 2025 at 8:43 PM
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]
September 26, 2025 at 11:19 PM
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]
September 25, 2025 at 6:16 AM
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]
September 18, 2025 at 3:21 AM
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]
September 12, 2025 at 8:29 PM
@llewelly @soaproot it's a super interesting question and it would have to be investigated if there were a taphonomic signature of pseudofeces! This a pretty well cited bulletin from 2012 reported it is poorly understood!
September 6, 2025 at 3:10 PM
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]
September 5, 2025 at 8:14 PM
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]
September 3, 2025 at 5:08 PM
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]
September 2, 2025 at 9:49 PM
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
August 31, 2025 at 11:27 PM
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]
August 28, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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]
August 26, 2025 at 3:29 PM
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]
August 25, 2025 at 3:22 PM
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]
August 18, 2025 at 3:26 PM
The bivalve's gill cilia do some limited rejection of non-food particles, but are generally dedicated to grabbing anything they can. The main sorting action is provided by labial palps, near the mouth, kind of like lips. These grab food particles to pull near the […]

[Original post on scicomm.xyz]
August 11, 2025 at 8:36 PM
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]
August 11, 2025 at 6:01 AM
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]
August 4, 2025 at 4:21 PM
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]
July 30, 2025 at 12:13 AM