The giant honeycomb oyster (''Hyotissa hyotis'') is a very large saltwater oyster, a

marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

bivalve Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bival ...

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

. Species in this family are known as honeycomb oysters or "foam oysters" because under magnification, their shell structure is foam-like. Like most bivalves, the giant honeycomb oyster is a filter feeder. Image:Hyotissa hyotis Mamoudzou.jpg, shallow in

Mayotte Mayotte (; french: Mayotte, ; Shimaore: ''Maore'', ; Kibushi: ''Maori'', ), officially the Department of Mayotte (french: Département de Mayotte), is an overseas department and region and single territorial collectivity of France. It is loc ...

Image:Hyotissa hyotis (3).jpg, Deeper Image:Hyotissa hyotis (2).jpg, Recently dead specimen Image:Hyotissa hyotis - Kyoto University Museum - DSC06407.JPG Image:Naturalis Biodiversity Center - RMNH.MOL.319515 1 - Hyotissa hyotis (Linnaeus, 1758) - Gryphaeidae - Mollusc shell.jpeg Image:Naturalis Biodiversity Center - ZMA.MOLL.4827 - Hyotissa hyotis (Linnaeus, 1758) - Gryphaeidae - Mollusc shell.jpeg

Habitat and range

Its native range is in deeper water in the

Indo-Pacific The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

Ocean. It has however also been found recently as an accidentally introduced species in the

Florida Keys The Florida Keys are a coral cay archipelago located off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami, and e ...

.Rüdiger Bieler, Paula M. Mikkelsen, Taehwan Lee & Diarmaid Ó Foighil, « Discovery of the Indo-Pacific oyster Hyotissa hyotis (Linnaeus, 1758) in the Florida Keys (Bivalvia : Gryphaeidae) », Molluscan Research, vol. 24, 2004, p. 149–159
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Bibliography

* Paula M. Mikkelsen and Rudiger Bieler, 2008, ''Seashells of Southern Florida: Living Marine mollusks of the Florida Keys and adjacent regions'', Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford,

References

Gryphaeidae Molluscs described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{bivalve-stub