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.

A Cool Deep-sea Octopus!

Social media was abuzz recently with this image of a beautiful deep-sea octopus photographed at 1,177 m depth by the crew of R/V Falkor of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, during their recent Visioning Coral Sea expedition off Australia. Michael Vecchione, Curator of Cephalopoda at the Smithsonian, identified it as a species of the genus Muusoctopus. I wrote about another species of Muusoctopus in the November 29, 2019 issue of this blog, briefly describing the "Octopus Garden." This is a large, imp

Shell of the Week: The Wide-coil Wentletrap

Today, I want to introduce the last species of our three-part series on open-coiling, the Wide-coil Wentletrap, Cycloscala echinaticosta (d’Orbigny, 1842), a species found in the tropical western Atlantic Ocean. In this species, the degree of coiling “openness,” or the distance from one whorl to the next, can vary wildly among individual shells. The possible advantages for these species to "wear" open-coiled shells have not yet been fully explored by malacologists. #widecoilwentletrap #cycloscal

Snakes and Snail “Handedness”

As discussed previously in this blog, most snail species coil to the right (dextral), and a few, such as the local Lightning Whelk, coil to the left (sinistral). In a few species of land snails, however, there seems to be as many dextral individuals as there are sinistral ones. Switch gears to snail-eating snakes: As their common name suggests, Southeast Asian snail-eating snakes in the genus Pareas evolved to prey on snails, and do it by initially biting onto the outer rim (the “outer lip”) of

Nature’s Iron-based Shell Dye

Did you ever wonder why some shells on the beach are abnormally dark-gray, bluish, or almost black? They are not dark to begin with: The right valve of a Southern Quahog, Mercenaria campechiensis, on left, acquired its dark, bluish hues after being buried in sand or mud for some time (compare to “normal” color valve on right.) In sand or mud with levels of oxygen below normal (hypoxia) or where oxygen is completely lacking (anoxia), trace amounts of iron in the shell will combine with sulfur to

Shell of the Week: The Miller Nutmeg

Last week, using the Exquisite False Dial as an example, I introduced open-coiling, a situation where successive shell whorls do not touch each other, each whorl maintaining regular, proportional distances from its neighboring whorls. Other gastropods with open-coiling are, for instance, some members of the nutmeg family Cancellariidae, such as Extractrix milleri (Burch, 1949), from the eastern Pacific Ocean including the Galápagos Islands (below), an attractive gastropod related to our Common N

A New Episode in a Successful Series!

I was very pleased that the Board of Trustees invited me to serve in the position of Interim Director for the recently renovated Museum. With more than 24 years of in-house experience—17 of which as the Museum Director—I am well-positioned to support the staff and community during this transition. I also intend on maintaining my activities as Curator, in particular as this relates to my role as principal investigator in grant-funded projects, such as the Digital Imaging Project funded by the In

Shell of the Week: The Exquisite False Dial

Spirolaxis centrifuga (Monterosato, 1890) is a delicate and truly attractive species of the sundial snail family Architectonicidae. The species is found in deeper water in the western and eastern Atlantic, and may grow to about 5 mm (0.2 inch) in diameter. The shell is open-coiled, with successive whorls (shell “turns”) not touching each other, yet maintaining regular, proportional distances from the neighboring whorls. Gastropods from other families make open-coiled shells; they are all very el

Museum Receives Major Grant!

I am glad to report that the Museum received notice of grant funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for an important collection project. The project, funded via NSF’s Infrastructure for Capacity in Biology core program, is titled “Collaborative Research: Mobilizing Millions of Marine Mollusks of the Eastern Seaboard.” A consortium of fifteen collections* in the US was formed to improve on data and accessibility for about 3,000 species (over 4.5 million individual specimens) of marine

New Jeweled Top Snails!

Our Aquarium Curator, Rebecca Mensch, just received a number of Jeweled Top Snails, Calliostoma annulatum (Lightfoot, 1786), AKA Purple-Ringed Top Snail, for display. This is a shallow- and cold-water gastropod from the West Coast of North America, found from Baja California, México, to Alaska. Jeweled Top Snails are normally associated with the large fronds of Giant Kelp seaweed Macrocystis pyrifera. This paragraph about the species, quoted from the Monterey Bay Aquarium website, explains its m

Shell of the Week: The Little Oat Marginella

Measuring up to 9 mm (about 0.35 inch), the Little Oat Marginella, Prunum bellulum (Dall, 1890) is a relatively common shallow-water species in the Caribbean and the tropical western Atlantic. The species has a relatively elongate shell, with the spire comprising about 1/7 of shell length. The aperture arrows posteriorly (“up” in the images), and the columella bears four folds, or plicae. The color is grayish- to blueish-white, and the shell surface in fresh or living specimens is smooth, glossy