Columellar muscle of neogastropods: muscle attachment and the function of columellar folds. From: The Biological Bulletin | Date: December 1, 2003| Author: | COPYRIGHT 2003 Marine Biological Laboratory. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Malacologists often assume that ornamentation on snail shells is functional, and therefore adaptive. 1 conducted the first comprehensive test of the widely accepted hypothesis that columellar folds, a type of internal ornamentation, enhance the performance of the columellar muscle, which attaches the snail to its shell. Careful dissections of live, non-relaxed specimens reveal that the physical attachment between the columellar muscle and the columella is not restricted to a small, circular patch located deep within the shell. Instead, the attachment is long and narrow, extending ...

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Larval shell muscles in the Abalone Haliotis kamtschatkana. ; ...the larval (or velar) retractor muscle and the future columellar muscle. She suggested that the precocious differentiation of the larval retractor muscle relative to the columellar muscle initiates the mechanical twisting of the developing...

A vermetid gastropod with complex intracapsular cannibalism of nurse eggs and sibling larvae and a high potential for invasion (1). ; ...at Peanut Island, Florida, in May 2003. Adult snails were freed from their tubes by breaking the shell and severing the columellar muscle. Some voucher specimens were relaxed with Mg[Cl.sub.2], transferred to 4% formaldehyde (10% V/V formalin in filtered seawater...

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