Group sea snails Gasteropoda phylum Mollusca aquatic shell bed water sand slug
Gastropoda or gastropods (also previously known as univalves and sometimes also spelled Gasteropoda) are members of the phylum Mollusca and are more commonly known as "snails and slugs". This is the most diversified class in the phylum, with (60,000-75,000) to 80,000 living species. There are 409 recent families of gastropods. Fossil gastropods represent another 202 families. This class of animals is second only to insects in its number of known species. The Gastropoda include thousands of species of marine snails and sea slugs, as well as freshwater snails and freshwater limpets, and the terrestrial (land) snails and slugs. The class Gastropoda is striking in its extraordinary diversification of habitats. Representatives live in gardens, in woodland, in deserts, and on mountains; in small ditches, great rivers and lakes; in estuaries, mudflats, the rocky intertidal, the sandy subtidal, in the abyssal depths of the oceans, and numerous other ecological niches, including parasitic ones. Although the name "snail" can be, and often is, applied to all the members of this class, very commonly this word is restricted to those species which have an external shell large enough that the soft parts can withdraw completely into it. Those gastropods without a shell, and those which have only a very reduced or internal shell, are often known as slugs. The marine shelled species of gastropod include edible species such as abalone, conches, periwinkles, whelks, and numerous other sea snails which have coiled seashells. There are also a number of families of species such as all the various limpets, where the shell is coiled only in the larval stage, and is a simple conical structure after that.
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Photo credit: © 19th era / Alamy / Afripics
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