A limpet on the rocks in Costa Rica
Limpet is a common name most often applied to true limpets, a taxonomic group of sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs which have a simple broadly conical shell that, unlike the shell of most snails, is not coiled. True limpets are often found living on hard surfaces in the intertidal zone. Although true limpets are not permanently attached to a hard surface like a barnacle, when they are disturbed or need to resist strong wave action, limpets cling extremely tightly and strongly to the hard surface on which they live, using their muscular foot. A true limpet will often allow itself to be destroyed rather than give up its hold on a rock. As a result of this extraordinary clinging ability, the limpet has become a metaphor for objects or people who cling stubbornly to something, thus limpet mine. The common name "limpet" is also used for a number of different (not very closely related) groups of sea snails and freshwater snails (aquatic gastropod mollusks). Thus the common name "limpet" has very little taxonomic significance in and of itself; the name is applied not only to true limpets (the Patellogastropoda), but also to all snails that have a simple shell that is broadly conical in shape, and either is not spirally coiled, or appears not to be coiled in the adult snail. In other words the shell of all limpets is "patelliform", which means the shell is shaped more or less like the shell of most true limpets. The term "false limpets" is used for some (but not all) of the other groups that have a conical shell but are not true limpets. All of the true limpets are marine and have gills. However, because the feature of a simple conical shell has arisen and re-arisen independently many times in gastropod evolution, limpets form part of many different evolutionary lineages and are found in many different environments. There are some saltwater limpets that breathe air, and there are freshwater limpets which originally had a lung, being descended from air-breathing land sna
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License: Licensed
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Keywords: close, close-, costa, gastropod, limpet, macro, marine, rica, shell, star
