Full bibliography

Episodic events which affect populations of marine invertebrate species are rarely documented. We report the catastrophic mass exhumation and deposition of a large aggregation of adult bivalves (Mulinia lateralis [Say, 1822]) to a suboptimal habitat on a sandy intertidal beach of St. Catherines Island, Georgia, USA. The displaced population impacted a large area (7000 m2) of the beach and consisted of similar-sized clams (∼ 13 mm mean shell length). We suggest that the exhumation could have been a result of storm-induced shear stress, an hypoxic event, or other environmental stress on the individuals. Events of this type could have important implications for population dynamics and cohort distribution, fisheries predictions and harvests, and interpretation of fossil assemblages.