Unravelling the Condylocardiidae family (Mollusca, Bivalvia): an anatomical and taxonomic study of Warrana besnardi (Klappenbach, 1963)

• Grant number: 18/11431-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2018
• End date: September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Morphology of Recent Groups
• Principal Investigator: Flávio Dias Passos
• Grantee: Alan Rodrigo Batistão
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the Animal Kingdom, the Phylum Mollusca is second largest in diversity, with about 76.000 known living species. Among the seven molluscan classes, bivalves stands out by having their bodies covered by the shell composed of two parts, the valves, which names the taxon. For Brazil, there are about 500 species of marine bivalves, 368 of them restricted to the continental shelf. Many of these are little studied for they are more rare, small and because they do not have an immediate importance for Man, besides having a bathymetric distribution restricted to the sublittoral. Among these, species of the Family Condylocardiidae Bernard, 1896 stands out, there being two of them recorded from Brazil, Carditopsis smithi (Dall, 1896) and Warrana besnardi (Klappenbach, 1962), the latter known from the southeastern and southern coasts, also occurring in Uruguay. W. besnardi was originally described in the genus Americuna, and recently was transferred to Warrana Laseron, 1953, but this was solely based on conchological characters; for the Condylocardiidae, as a whole, there is virtually no information on the anatomy of its species. Therefore, aiming to study the taxonomy and biology of W. besnardi, its shell and the anatomical characteristics will be investigated in more detail, through light and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). With these data, it is intended to advance in the knowledge about the mode of life, feeding type and details of its reproductive biology, improving the diagnosis of this species, and discussing its position in Warrana and also the implications of the miniaturization to the different anatomical aspects. In fact, the specimens are currently under studies through stereomicroscopes and SEM images, and by histological sections.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

PASSOS, FLAVIO DIAS; BATISTAO, ALAN RODRIGO; BIELER, RUDIGER. When size matters: the first comprehensive anatomical study of a species of ``Condylocardiidae{''}, an extremely miniaturized bivalve. PEERJ COMPUTER SCIENCE, v. 9, AUG 30 2021. (18/11431-6, 18/10313-0, 18/06347-6)

BATISTAO, ALAN RODRIGO; PASSOS, FLAVIO DIAS. New data on Warrana besnardi, a tiny bivalve mollusk from the southeastern Brazilian coast. AMERICAN MALACOLOGICAL BULLETIN, v. 38, n. 1, p. 55-59, JUL 2020. (18/06347-6, 18/10313-0, 18/11431-6)