Presenting... The Many Ways of Being a Limpet

An image of some limpets including Fissurella, Calyptraea and Crepidula

Presenting... The Many Ways of Being A Limpet

19 DECEMBER 2023 – 11 FEBRUARY 2024

 

Visit our new temporary exhibit and learn about the many different kinds of limpets that have evolved independently of each other!

Probably most familiar as shelled animals found in rockpools, limpets are actually gastropod molluscs that have lost or reduced the typical coiled snail shell and evolved a flattened cap or cone-shaped shell. However, 'limpets' is not a natural group of animals descended from a single limpet-shelled lineage. Instead, limpet-like shells have evolved independently over 50 times in gastropods – a process called limpetisation.

There are many ways of being a limpet; the term merely describes any shell form with little or flattened coiling and with a very wide opening underneath the shell. Limpetised lineages of gastropods have been found in freshwater and marine environments, in free-living and parasitic groups and with external or internal shells.

 

 

 

The presenting case featuring the limpets display
 
Fissurella limpets

Fissurellidae limpets are commonly known as Keyhole Limpets, owing to the small opening in the top of their shells

A drawer of limpet shells on display in the presenting case showing a variety of different shell shapes and sizes

Limpet shells take on a variety of different forms from the small domes of Button Snails (Trimusculidae) to the large, almost flat shells of Umbrella Slugs (Umbraculidae)

Trochita limpets

Gastropods in the genus Trochita have re-evolved a coiled shell from an uncoiled form. Is this an example of de-limpetisation?

 

 

 

Map showing that the presenting case is just to the left, next to the help desk, as you enter the Oxford Natural History Museum through the main door.

You can find the Presenting Case next to the Welcome Desk; just to the left as you enter the Museum through the main entrance.