A rock-boring and rock-ingesting freshwater bivalve (shipworm) from the Philippines

J. Reuben Shipway, Marvin A. Altamia, Gary Rosenberg, Gisela P. Concepcion, Margo G. Haygood, Daniel L. Distel

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    18 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Shipworms are a group of wood-boring and wood-feeding bivalves of extraordinary economic, ecological and historical importance. Known in the literature since the fourth century BC, shipworms are both destructive pests and critical providers of ecosystem services. All previously described shipworms are obligate wood-borers, completing all or part of their life cycle in wood and most are thought to use wood as a primary source of nutrition. Here, we report and describe a new anatomically and morphologically divergent species of shipworm that bores in carbonate limestone rather than in woody substrates and lacks adaptations associated with wood-boring and wood digestion. The species is highly unusual in that it bores by ingesting rock and is among the very few known freshwater rock-boring macrobioero-ders. The calcareous burrow linings of this species resemble fossil borings normally associated with bivalve bioerosion of wood substrates (ichnospecies Teredolites longissimus) in marginal and fully marine settings. The occurrence of this newly recognized shipworm in a lithic substrate has implications for teredinid phylogeny and evolution, and interpreting palaeoenvironmental conditions based on fossil bioerosion features.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Article number20190434
    JournalProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
    Volume286
    Issue number1905
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Jun 26 2019

    Keywords

    • Freshwater ecology
    • Macrobioerosion
    • Palaeontology
    • Rock-boring
    • Shipworms
    • Teredinidae

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Immunology and Microbiology
    • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
    • General Environmental Science
    • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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