Meeting Abstract
Hinges enable bivalves to perform the imperative motion of opening and closing the paired valves, while resisting shear and predation. Although almost all members of the bivalve family Veneridae are burrowers or borers, a spectrum of feeding, mobility, and substrate categories can be found within the family. The diversity in hingeplates across the venerids echoes the functional variety that defines this large family. Despite the biomechanical importance of the hinge, its great complexity has made it difficult to analyze in a morphometric framework. New technologies, including micro computed tomography (microCT) and three-dimensional morphometrics, have allowed us to quantify the form of the bivalve hingeplate, specifically focusing on the “toothbank” (i.e. the region of the hinge containing the primary dentition in the form of the cardinal teeth). Our preliminary results reveal biomechanical trends among hingeplate shape, tooth structure, and tooth “topography”; venerid species that share lifestyle characteristics, specifically burrowing categories, share hingeplate and toothbank morphologies. For example, shallow burrowers such as Chione elevata tend to have relatively thicker cardinal teeth and wider hingeplate sockets than faster deeper burrowers like Macrocallista nimbosa. Overall, we discovered that these biomechanical trends correlate more strongly to ecological categories than taxonomic groupings.
