Clams play a vital role in filtering water, improving water quality, and providing habitat for other marine organisms.

Bivalves appear in the fossil record first in the early Cambrian more than 500 million years ago.

Clams have a highly developed nervous system.

Although clams may not possess a brain, they have ganglia and sensory organs that allow them to respond to their environment. They can detect light, vibrations, and even chemicals in the water.

In Oysters (Crassostrea virginica), serotonin increases, and dopamine decreases the activity their cilia to regulate water’s movement along their gills, and for capturing food particle.

The nervous system control of lateral ciliary activity of the gill of the bivalve mollusc, Crassostrea virginica https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1095643307010537

The smallest legally harvestable clams are called countnecks or peanuts, next size up are littlenecks, then topnecks. Above that are the cherrystones, and the largest are called quahogs or chowder clams.

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Bivalves typically display bilateral symmetry both in shell and anatomy, but there are significant departures from this theme in taxa such as scallops and oysters.

Tridacna gigas, the giant clam, has several hundred to several thousand pinhole eyespots about 0.5mm in diameter.