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The effect of water temperature on whelk drilling speed

Last year I published a little paper showing how whelks (Nucella lapillus) drill through mussel shells at different rates depending on water temperature. This involved making hundreds of hours of recordings of whelks slowly scraping their way through the calcium carbonate shell of Mytilus edulis mussels in different water temperatures. The video above includes two examples of those recordings from two different snails of the same size, highlighted as red dots on the graph in the video, one taken at a water temperature of 9°C (48°F) and the second at 17.5°C (63.5°F). What you’ll notice … Continue Reading