The habits and feeding organs of Dentalium entalis

Abstract

The Scaphopoda or tusk-shells are the smallest and most uniform class of molluscs. They burrow in sand of medium to coarse shelly grade, and specialize on a diet of hard-shelled microbenthos, particularly Foraminifera. Dentalium entalis L. is the commonest West European species, and may become locally dominant. Le Danois (1948) has described a ‘Dentalietum’ in deeper water sandy ground at about 100 fathoms in the southern Celtic Sea. Stephen (1933) discusses the distribution of D. entalis in the northern North Sea, where it is largely restricted to the ‘Offshore zone’, the southern limit being marked by the 60 m line. Low salinity is probably responsible for its absence from the southern North Sea; and in general it seems limited more by hydrographic conditions than by the relative abundance of foraminiferan food. For example, in Stephen's Thyasira+ Foraminifera Zone, it is no more than sparsely present. Holme (1953) finds Dentalium entalis rare or absent near Plymouth, though it was relatively common at the Eddystone Grounds at the end of last century (Allen, 1899). It has today receded to the mouth of the Channel, in coarse deposits resulting from fairly strong scour, and Holme suspects it to be one of the list of species sensitive to recent hydrographic changes in the area.For the living material used in this study I am greatly indebted to Mr N. A. Holme, who collected it in deeper water in the Celtic Sea on a 1953 cruise of the R.R.S. ‘Discovery II’. With it were collected Chlamys opercularis, Caryophyllia and in places Astropecten irregularis; there were also many of the tusk-shaped serpulid tube worm Ditrupa arietina which as I found can impose a neat deception on the uncritical hunter for scaphopods.