Antillean File Clam

Size to 25 mm (one inch). Shell elongate, resembling a “distorted scallop,” thin-walled, translucent-white, with many narrow radial ribs of irregular width and distribution. Hinge “ears” of about same size. The clam has salmon-pink gills and relatively large translucent-white tentacles festooned with white “rings” over their entire length. Records of beached shells for Sanibel and Captiva are far and few, the first pairs (photo) collected by W. Brumbach in 1964, then a valve retrieved by S. Hewitt in 2017, and the latest a valve collected by R. Mensch on Island Inn beach in November 2018.