Ensis
Genus of bivalves
Ensis is a genus of medium-sized edible saltwater clams, littoral bivalve molluscs in the family Pharidae. Ensis, or razor clams, are known in much of Scotland as spoots, for the spouts of water they eject while burrowing into the sand, when visible at low tide. This term may also colloquially include members of the genus Solen.
01Description
The shells are long, narrow, and parallel-sided. This shape resembles a closed, old-fashioned straight razor (a cut-throat razor), or a closed jackknife (pocket knife) and sometimes these clams are known as razor shells or jackknives. The shells in these species are fragile and can easily be damaged when digging for these clams.
02Ecology
Ensis species live in clean sand on exposed beaches. They are capable of digging very rapidly; see the description under the Atlantic jackknife clam. Some clammers catch jackknives by pouring salt on the characteristic keyhole-shaped breathing holes. The clam then tries to escape the salt by coming up out of its hole, and at this point it is possible to gently grab the shell and pull it out of the ground.
03Species
Thirteen species are currently recognised:
- Ensis californicus (Dall, 1899)
- Ensis directus (Conrad, 1843), Atlantic jackknife clam
- Ensis ensis (Linnaeus, 1758)
- Ensis goreensis (Clessin, 1888)
- Ensis macha (Molina, 1782)
- Ensis magnus (Schumacher, 1817)
- Ensis megistus (Pilsbry & McGinty, 1943)
- Ensis minor (Chenu, 1843)
- Ensis myrae (Berry, 1954)
- Ensis nitidus (Clessin, 1888)
- Ensis siliqua (Linnaeus, 1758), pod razor
- Ensis terranovensis (Vierna & Martínez-Lage, 2012)
- Ensis tropicalis (Hertlein & Strong, 1955)
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ensis”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ensiskils.jpg by No machine-readable author provided. Uwe kils assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0
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