Topic Oysters: Concept 1 Biology of oysters ...

• Main Author: Sühnel, Simone
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2023
• Subjects: mollusc, oyster, low-trophic species, aquaculture, sustainability, MOOC; Pacific; Antarc*; Antarctica; Crassostrea gigas; Pacific oyster
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7899695; https://zenodo.org/record/7899695

Oysters are two-shelled molluscs belonging to the class Bivalvia. In the Atlantic region the main oyster species of economic importance are the Pacific cupped oyster (Magallana/Crassostrea gigas) and the native European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis, in Europe), the mangrove oyster (Crassostrea gasar, in Brazil), and the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica, in the US). The Pacific oyster originates from Japan but has been introduced to all continents except Antarctica for aquaculture purposes (Padilla 2010), and is now one of the most widely introduced marine invertebrates (Ruesink et al. 2005, Sousa et al. 2009). Oysters are found in a wide range of habitats from sub-tidal areas (down to 40 m - O. edulis) to shallow, intertidal areas (e.g. M. gigas and C. gasar). Oysters can establish populations in a wide variety of habitat types, e.g. hard substrates, sandy or muddy areas, where they attach to small stones, shell fragments or other debris, or on conspecifics, forming reef-like structures at high densities, ...