'Disco Clam' Has Built-in Glass Light Show

The “disco clam,” a cute little mollusk known for its light show, now has another remarkable claim to animal kingdom fame: It possesses mirrored, glass lips.

Credit for the finding goes to UC Berkeley researcher Lindsey Dougherty, who led the study published in the latest issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

“I’ve dived with humpback whales and great white sharks,” Dougherty said in a press release. “But when I saw the disco clam, I was enamored. I said then, ‘I’m going to do a Ph.D. on the disco clam.’”

And that’s just what she’s doing. Check out her groovy video below, where you can get down to the disco clam:

For this latest study, Dougherty and her team conducted fieldwork at Lizard Island Research Station in Australia and the Raja Ampat Research and Conservation Center and Lembeh Resort in Indonesia. The researchers used a bunch of high-tech methods — transmission electron microscopy, spectrometry, high speed video, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and computer modeling — to study the detailed internal structure of the margin of the clam’s lip. That’s where the light show happens.

The inside of the clam’s lip is packed with tiny spheres of silica, the primary component of glass. These spheres are only 340 nanometers in diameter, and they are ideal reflectors, particularly of the blue light that penetrates deeper into seawater than red light. The outside of the lip contains no silica nanospheres. As a result, when the clam lip is furled, no light is reflected.

This turns out to be the secret behind the light show. Previously it was thought that the flashing was due to bioluminescence, a chemical reaction. Other marine organisms, such as lantern sharks, use bioluminescence.

Read more at Discovery News