Mollusks

Shell of the Week: The Jupiter Dondice

At 10 mm in length (a little less than 0.5 inch), the Jupiter Dondice, Dondice jupiteriensis García-Mendez, Padula, and Valdés, 2022, is one of the smallest (and most attractive) local species of nudibranchs (shell-less gastropods). The Jupiter Dondice has “moustache-like,” oral tentacles (left on image.) These tentacles can reach more than half the slug’s body length! The rhinophores, sensorial projections behind the oral tentacles, have irregular arrangements of rings on their upper half. The

Shell of the Week: The Smooth Flame Scallop

The Smooth Flame Scallop, Ctenoides mitis (Lamarck, 1807), is not a true scallop, but a member of the file clam family Limidae. It can can reach in excess of the 70 mm (about 2.76 inches). Its shell is relatively thin, bears a large number of fine radial ribs, and a thin brown periostracum. The Smooth Flame Scallop can be distinguished from the generally similar Rough File Clam, Ctenoides scaber, by the larger number of ribs. The species can be found off the coast of Florida, the Florida Keys, a

New Snail Named After Jimmy Buffet’s Song!

Very fittingly, a new marine snail was named this week after Jimmy Buffet’s best-known song, Margaritaville. Cayo margarita is a new species of worm snail from the Florida Keys reported by Rüdiger Bieler and collaborators that made the national news, including a nice article on CNN “Space + Science” online news. The bright lemon-yellow color of the snail’s “skin” provided the initial inspiration for the scientific name of the species. (And the genus name Cayo—low island, or key, in Spanish—honor

Shell of the Week: The Dwarf Planaxis

Hinea lineata is a small gastropod that reaches only about 10 mm (0.4 inch). The shell is smooth, and typically with narrow, brown spiral bands set against a cream-colored background. The species is found intertidally (between low and high tide lines) from East Florida, Bermuda, Bahamas, throughout the Caribbean south to Venezuela, and mid-Atlantic oceanic islands.

Shell of the Week: The Little-ribbed Cardiomya

The bivalve Cardiomya costellata reaches only 11 mm (0.44 inch) and, as most members of the family Cuspidariidae do, has a shell sculpture of prominent radial (from the beak to the margin) ribs and a tube-like projection on the posterior end of the shell called a rostrum. The internal surface of the valves is glossy. Cuspidariid clams are carnivores and live buried, sticking their siphons through the rostrum out of the soft-sand or mud to detect and ingest prey (small worms, crustaceans, etc.) T

Cool 3D Models of Freshwater Mussels!

During the August episode of the National Shell Museum lecture series, Smithsonian’s Curator of Bivalves Dr John Pfeiffer presented (among several advances in the study of North American freshwater mussels) “Freshwater Mussels of America.” Dr Pfeiffer plays a major role in that great project, developed in association with his “alma mater,” the University of Florida/Florida Museum (Gainesville). “Freshwater Mussels of America” displays awesome 3D models of 100 species of freshwater bivalves from

Florida United Malacologists 2024

Save the Date! The next meeting of Florida United Malacologists (FUM) will take place on Sanibel Island, Florida, on Saturday, April 13, 2024, at the Sanibel Community House, 2173 Periwinkle Way, on Sanibel. The one-day gathering brings together researchers, collectors, students, citizen scientists, and enthusiasts interested in a broad range of mollusk-related topics. Read more about previous FUM events at https://shellmuseum.org/2022-fum. Registration and more information to follow soon. W

Conserving Springsnails at the Phoenix Zoo

Aquariums and Zoos play an important role in conservation, by breeding, rearing large numbers of offspring, and releasing ("propagating" in conservation jargon) the animals back into their natural environment. Such in-house conservation efforts usually go hand-in-hand with work that aims to mitigate the cause or causes for the endangerment of the species in the first place. Freshwater mollusks are one of the most imperiled groups of animals in the United States. One of the organizations that

Shell of the Week: The White Verticordia

Spinosipella agnes is a small (reaching 23.2 mm or 0.9 inch) deep-water clam that was described in 2008 by Luiz Simone and Carlo Cunha in the National Shell Museum’s own journal The Nautilus. The characteristic shell sculpture includes sharp-ribs that swirl around the surface of the shell. For that and other reasons, the species was for many years confused with the Sharp-rib Verticordia, Spinosipella acuticostata, from the eastern Atlantic Ocean. The White Verticordia can be found in in deep wa

Eyes Communicate with Tentacles in Scallops

In 2019, I reported on the great work on the eyes of scallops done by Daniel Speiser and his team at the University of South Carolina. Among other finds, Speiser and his collaborators have shown that scallops can narrow their eye pupils upon exposure to light, and that the blue eye color of Bay Scallops and other scallops is produced by blue nanospheres that may help increase vision contrast. Scallops have a visual system of dozens of eyes distributed almost along the entire periphery of their s