RESPIRATORY SYSTEM OF

BIVALVES
• BIVALVES- have an open circulatory system
that bathes the organs in hemolymph.
• The heart has three chambers: two auricles
receiving blood from gills, and a single
ventricle.
• The ventricle is muscular and pumps
hemolymph into the aorta, and then to the
rest of the body.
• Some bivalves have a single aorta, but mostly
also have second, usually smaller, aorta
serving the hind parts of the animal.
• Oxygen is absorbed into the hemolymph in the
gills which provide the primary respiratory
surface.
• The gills hand down into the mantle cavity, the
wall of which provides a secondary respiratory
surface being well supplied with capillaries.
• In the species with no gills, such as the subclass
Anomalodesmata, the wall of the mantle cavity
is the only organ involved in respiration.
• Bivalves adapted to tidal environments can
survived for several hours out of the water by
closing their shells tightly.
• Some fresh water species, when exposed to the
air, can gape the shell slightly and gas exchange
can take place.
• The hemolymph usually lacks any respiratory
pigment, although members of the families
Arcidae and Limidae are known to possess
heamoglobin dissolved directly into the serum.
• In the carnivorous genus poromya, the has
hemolymph has red amoebocytes containing a
haemoglobin pigment.
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