Organisms exert remarkable controls over the minerals that form such an important part of their internal or external skeletons. For example, the microenvironment in animals that use calcium carbonate in their shells determines not only where and when crystals form but also which crystalline form, or polymorph, they will be. As illustrated in the scanning electron micrographs above, the segmente...

Heavy metals in the aquatic environment have to date come mainly from naturally occurring geochemical materials. However, this has been enhanced by human activity such as gold mining in the case of heavy metal pollution in Sg Sarawak Kanan. The high suspended solid loads in the river have quite efficiently removed most soluble metals from the water and trapped them in the bottom sediment. Three...

Freshwater molluscs play an important role in aquatic ecosystems, providing food for many fish species and vertebrates. Investigations on factors that determine mollusc species richness and distribution in wetland systems are scarce in the Neotropical region. The main goal of this study was to determine how much variation in mollusc richness and composition is explained by area, hydroperiod, al...

We used historical patterns of deposition of mollusc shells to infer changes to inshore benthic assemblages in the southeastern Tasmanian region over the past 120 years. We identified and counted shells in slices embedded within 1m long Pb-dated sediment cores were collected at 13 sites in water depths of 8–16 m. Declines in mollusc species richness and shell production occurred during the past...

In 1937/38 representative mollusc collections were made in Jakarta Bay (West Java, Indonesia). New data from here and the adjacent offshore Thousand Islands archipelago (Kepulauan Seribu) became available in 2005. Although collecting efforts and sampling methods differed, a comparison of the molluscan fauna of Jakarta Bay between 1937/38 and 2005 reveals a distinct deterioration. From 1937 to 2...

Aquaculture production of molluscs is worth US$11 billion per year and represents 65% of World mollusc product. A significant limitation to the industry is loss of stock through bacterial disease. Traditional methods to combat disease with antibiotics have been questioned and alternatives have been sought. The field of probiotics as well as the screening methods used to acquire probiotic strain...

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