Limpets

A limpet is an aquatic snail with a shell that is broadly conical in shape. "Limpet" informally refers to any gastropod whose shell has no obvious coiling, like the coiling which can be seen in the shells of garden snails or winkles.

Although all limpets are members of the class Gastropoda, limpets are highly polyphyletic, meaning that the various groups that we call "limpets" have descended independently from different ancestral gastropods. This general category of conical shell is technically known as "patelliform", meaning dish-shaped. Some species of limpet live in fresh water, but these are the exception. All members of the large and ancient marine clade Patellogastropoda are limpets, and within that clade the family Patellidae in particular are often called the "true limpets".

Other groups, not in the same family, are also called limpets of one type or another because of the similar shapes of their shells. Examples include the Fissurellidae, the "keyhole limpet" family, which is part of the clade Vetigastropoda. However, many other members of the Vetigastropoda do not have the morphology of limpets.

True limpets in the family Patellidae live on hard surfaces in the intertidal zone. Unlike barnacles or mussels, true limpets are capable of locomotion instead of being permanently attached to a single spot. However, when they need to resist strong wave action or other disturbances, limpets cling extremely firmly to the surface on which they live, using their muscular foot to apply suction combined with the effect of adhesive mucus. It often is very difficult to remove a true limpet from a rock without injuring or killing it.

All "true" limpets are marine and have gills. However, because the adaptive feature of a simple conical shell has repeatedly arisen independently in gastropod evolution, limpets from many different evolutionary lineages occur in widely different environments. Some saltwater limpets such as Trimusculidae breathe air, and some freshwater limpets are descendants of air-breathing land snails (e.g. the genus Ancylus) whose ancestors had a pallial cavity serving as a lung. In these small freshwater limpets, that "lung" underwent secondary adaptation to allow the absorption of dissolved oxygen from water.

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