Gastropods (Gastropoda) include a wide variety of organisms such as terrestrial snails and slugs, sea slugs, sea hares, sea butterflies, canoe shells, conchs, whelks, limpets, periwinkles, oyster borers, coweries, nudibranchs, and many others. The Gastropoda group is the largest of all mollusc groups, with approximately 40,000 living species and fossil evidence of over 15,000 extinct species.The unifying characteristics of the Gastropoda include:
- most have a single spirally coiled shell
- undergo torsion during development
- posess a mantle cavity and mantle
- posess a muscular foot
- most are dioecious but some (such as snails) are hermaphroditic
Classification:
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