C.K. YAP
Abstract
The mudflat snails Telescopium telescopium were collected from 18 geographical sampling sites in the intertidal area of Peninsular Malaysia. In this paper, the concentrations of Fe were determined in the seven different soft tissues of the mudflat snails namely foot, cephalic tentacles (CT), mantle, muscle, gill, digestive caecum (DC) and remaining soft tissues (REST). It is found that different concentrations of Fe were found in the different soft tissues, indicating different mechanisms of sequestration and regulations of Fe in these different tissues. Based on the hierarchical cluster analysis of all different soft tissues of T. telescopium, it was found that CT, foot, muscle and mantle are clustered as a single entity while the other major cluster included two subclusters with DC as a single entity while REST and gill as the other one. This clustering pattern is related to Fe concentrations accumulated in each soft tissues of T. telescopium. Present Fe data are important for future reference.