Appolloni, Massimo;Smriglio, Carlo;Amati, Bruno;Lugliè, Lorenzo;Nofroni, Italo;Tringali, Lionello P.;Mariottini, Paolo;Oliverio, Marco
OverviewAI-generated
Cardiidae is a family of bivalve mollusks within the order Cardiida, class Bivalvia, and phylum Mollusca. The taxon belongs to the superfamily Cardioidea and was described by Lamarck in 1809. Common names for the group include cockle shells, Herzmuscheln, hjerteskjell, and Hartschelpen. The family is accepted in taxonomic databases and has been documented in the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition.
Members of this family inhabit marine, brackish, and freshwater environments. Records indicate the presence of Cardiidae in the United States, with specimens held by institutions such as LACM. The taxon has an occurrence count of 439,703 and is referenced by 970 other encyclopedia articles.
Synthesized by Vinony from 33 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, GBIF, PubMed, Gbif Occ, WoRMS, iDigBio, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Species
cockle shells
FAMILY
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumMollusca
- ClassBivalvia
- OrderCardiida
- FamilyCardiidae
Many cockles found on the beach are fossils. They date back to the Eemian interglacial period. In those days, a warmer climate dominated the North Sea region. There were many species no longer found nowadays: poorly-ribbed cockles, spiny cockles, rough cockles and little cockles. Most of them closely resemble the present (common) cockles, but as a rule are much thicker. Due to the age, the shells are opaque and dark brown to black in color, and often worn.
via GBIF
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 4,439
- With media
- 88
- Family
- Cardiidae
- Collections
- LACM
- Recorded in
- United States
Research
282 papers- The behaviour of giant clams (Bivalvia: Cardiidae: Tridacninae).Marine biology · 2014
- Positive Selection of Mitochondrial cytochrome b Gene in the Marine Bivalve Keenocardium buelowi (Bivalvia, Cardiidae).Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024
- Range expansion and first observation of Tridacna noae (Cardiidae: Tridacninae) in American Sāmoa.Ecology and evolution · 2022
- The genome sequence of the Atlantic Strawberry Cockle, Americardia media (Linnaeus, 1758) (Cardiida: Cardiidae).Wellcome open research · 2025
- The genome sequence of a heart cockle, Fragum fragum (Linnaeus, 1758).Wellcome open research · 2024
via PubMed
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- taxon
- Parent taxon
- Cardioidea
- Image
- Cockle.jpg
Show 6 more facts
- taxon rank
- family
- Commons category
- Cardiidae
- taxon name
- Cardiidae
- topic's main category
- Category:Cardiidae
- taxon common name
- Herzmuscheln
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A cockle is a marine bivalve mollusc. Although many small edible bivalves are loosely called cockles, true cockles are species in the family Cardiidae.
True cockles live in sandy, sheltered beaches throughout the world. The distinctive rounded shells are bilaterally symmetrical, and are heart-shaped when viewed from the end. Numerous radial, evenly spaced ribs are a feature of the shell in most but not all genera (for an exception, see the genus Laevicardium, the egg cockles, which have very smooth shells).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Cardiidae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.