Bivalves · Nuculanida · Nuculanidae

Northern Nutclam

Nuculana pernula

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

A small Arctic-boreal bivalve with an elongated, pointed shell, living buried in the muddy bottoms of the cold seas of the North Atlantic, the Arctic and the North Pacific. It does not filter the water as most clams do: it is a deposit feeder that gathers organic matter from the sediment with two long, mobile labial palps, highly characteristic of the family Nuculanidae.

Size

up to 3.5 cm

Diet

Omnivore

Combines animal and plant food depending on availability.

Social structure

Solitary

Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

OceanOmnivore Solitary Ocean Mollusc

18countries 14parks 5dive sites

Fun facts

Instead of filtering the water, it forages in the mud with extensible labial palps longer than its own shell.
Its shell has a rear end drawn out into a beak, from which it takes its common name of pointed nut clam.
It does not filter water as most bivalves do: it is a detritivore and uses very long, extensible labial palps to search the surrounding mud for organic particles.
It belongs to the protobranchs, the oldest bivalve lineage, which retains gills used mainly for respiration rather than feeding.
The rear end of its shell is drawn out into a beak, which is where the name nut clam comes from.
It is a dominant component of Arctic mud communities and important prey for bottom-feeding fish.