Super weird molluscs: biodiversity and extinction

Understanding the diversity of animal body plans is one of the grand challenges of evolutionary biology. Among animal phyla, Mollusca represents the greatest morphological disparity, with adult forms varying from tiny bivalves less than 1 mm, to 18 m giant squid. Even within the eight distinct living classes of molluscs there are numerous examples of exceptional morphological novelties-- snails with iron-infused scales, headless chitons with image-forming eyes embedded in their dorsal shells, bivalves that crawl and live in trees, and many more-- pointing to an enduring evolutionary plasticity of shell and body form. Exploring this grand diversity of marine molluscs requires a coordinated global sampling that is inclusive to all body plans, niches, and clades, and all malacologists.