Bivalve immunity

Abstract

Bivalves are comprised of animals unclosed in two shell valves, such as mussels, oysters, scallops and clams. There are about 7,500 bivalve species and some of them are of commercial importance. Recently, interest in bivalve immunity has increased due to the importance in worldwide aquaculture and their role inaquatic environmental science and their position in phylogenetic research. This chapter provides a short review of bivalve immunity, including cellular and humoral immunity and the key components and the interactions involved in humoral immunity. © 2010 Landes Bioscience and Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.