Curator’s Corner

Museum, research, and collection updates from Dr. José H. Leal, plus Shell of the Week, which highlights a different species every other Friday. Most Shells of the Week are found in Southwest Florida.

Dr. José H. Leal serves as the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium’s Science Director and Curator. He received his Ph.D. in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the University of Miami and has served at the Museum since 1996.

Shell of the Week: The Rader Angular Triton

Cymatium raderi d’Attilio & Myers, 1984, is a large triton snail of the family Cymatiidae. Its shell is characterized by large, wing-like varices, or the shell expansions manufactured by the snail at irregular intervals. The triangular expansions are similar to, but more accentuated than those in the related species Cymatium femorale, also known as the Angular Triton. The species is found in the Gulf of Mexico, the greater Caribbean to Brazil, but also occasionally off the East Coast of Florida

Shell of the Week: The Elegant Venus Clam

The Elegant Venus Clam, Hysteroconcha dione (Linnaeus, 1758), is found in the Caribbean but may be found sporadically off the East Coast of Florida and the Florida Keys. The Elegant Venus Clam has its shell festooned with two rows of prominent spines on the posterior end of each valve. In many sand-burrowing bivalves such as the Elegant Venus Clam, the posterior end faces up, and sometimes sticks out of the sand. The positioning of spines along the posterior end of the shell suggests that they h

The Striate Glass-hair Chiton

Chitons belong to a class of mollusks called the Polyplacophora (Greek for “bearers of many plates”). Their bodies are covered by eight (rarely seven) shelly plates, also known as valves. The valves are interlocked and surrounded by a leathery girdle. The Striate Glass-hair Chiton, Acanthochitona pygmaea (Pilsbry, 1893), is one of two species of chitons found in shallow-water along the coast of SW Florida. The Striate Glass-hair Chiton may reach a little more than 0.5 inch in size and its valves

Shell of the Week: The Checkered Pheasant

Eulithidium affine (C.B. Adams, 1850), reaches 7 mm (about 0.3 inches), and its small shell is thin, smooth, but strong. The shell is basically devoid of any sculpture, and the color pattern in the species usually consists of a combination of red or pink-red, broad, zig-zag bands overlaid with a number of small red and white dots. The Checkered Pheasant and its close relatives live on Sargassum, other types of seaweeds, and seagrasses. The species is found in shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico,

A Lush Larva

This great image of a veliger gastropod larva highlights the two velar lobes, or the structures that help stabilize the larva in the water and, through the beating action of minute, hair-like cilia along the edges, assist in bringing food particles to the snail’s mouth. The photo, taken by Linda Ianiello, is part of the Museum’s exhibition Black Water: Nocturnal Photography of Open-Ocean Mollusks. The exhibit, open from December 10, 2021 through May 5, 2022, displays images of assorted mollusks

Shell Music

Did you know that shells have been used for centuries as musical instruments? “There is no society without song, and there is no ritual or celebrations without accompanying sounds,” state the authors of an article published last year in ScienceAdvances (link below). In the article, C. Fritz and collaborators researched the oldest use of a shell as an instrument. Shells were among the first natural objects that lent themselves to use as instruments capable of producing variable sounds; in their a

Shell of the Week: The Paz Murex

Paziella pazi (Crosse, 1869) reaches 47 mm (about 1.9 inches), and is a very attractive species among a family known for cool-looking shells, the Muricidae. The species is found in moderately deep water in the Gulf of Mexico, East Coast of Florida and the Keys, Bahamas, and the northern Caribbean Sea. Paz’s Murex shells have a typical sculpture of about 4–6 long spines per whorl, The spines are very “open,” in some case deployed almost perpendicularly to the whorls. #paziellapazi #pazmurex #muri

Mollusks in the Local News!

Once again, mollusks made the front cover of the local (Fort Myers, Florida) News Press. Thanks to an extraordinary effort from the Sanibel Captiva Shell Club and its members, and under the serene leadership of Joyce Matthys, the first, local live-mollusks count took place on Sanibel, on Monday, January 3, during an early-day, very low, low tide! About 50 shell club members and friends participated, the National Shell Museum provided identification of less common species, and will be cooperating

Shell of the Week: The Chocolate-lined Top Snail

Calliostoma javanicum , (Lamarck, 1822), reaches 35 mm (about 1.4 inches), and is one the most attractive top snail species in the western Atlantic. Its shell is covered with dark-brown spiral lines, which are also present on the shell base (the “bottom” of the shell.) The shell outline is “triangular”, with the spire joining the base at a sharp angle. The species is present in the Gulf of Mexico (in deeper water), the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean south to Brazil.#calliostomajavanicum #chocol

Children That Don’t Look Like Their Famous Parents

The photos below show two distinctive stages in the life of the renowned Atlantic Triton Trumpet, Charonia variegata, a large marine snail that can be found along the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and parts of East Florida. Sometimes, when you are at a loss as to the identity of a larval or juvenile shell, you may want to “find the missing pieces of the puzzle,” the intermediary stages, or a growth series, linking that young shell to the mature, adult form. This is exactly what we did a few yea