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.

Search our Collection… Remotely!

I am glad to inform that a web portal is now available for remote searches in the catalog of our research collection of mollusks. One of the largest of its kind in the United States, the Museum's collection provides taxonomic, geographic, and temporal data on marine, terrestrial, and freshwater mollusks to a broad range of users in zoology, marine biology, genetics, conservation, geology, and other fields. The collection currently includes about 129,500 lots, and its catalog was recently transfe

We’re Right-handed or Left-handed…

And so are shells! Snails have coiled shells, and most coil in the right-hand direction: if you look at the shell with its tip pointing up, the opening is on the right side. These are called dextral shells, in contrast to left-handed ones, called sinistral. It’s long been suspected that the coiling direction, also known as chirality, is determined by a single gene. This was confirmed recently by Japanese researchers Masanori Abe and Reiko Usuda. Using complex gene-editing technologies to induce

Shell of the Week: The Princess Venus

Periglypta listeri (J.E. Gray, 1838) is another member of the diverse venus clam family, the Veneridae (which includes the Southern Quahog, Cross-barred Venus, Sunray Venus, and many other local species). The Princess Venus grows to about 65 mm (about 2.5 inches), and differs from other local venus clams by the sharply truncated posterior margin (on left of images), which gives a quadrangular aspect to the shell. The sculpture is vaguely similar to that of the Lady-in-waiting Venus (Chionopsis i

Shell of the Week: The Angel Wing

Cyrtopleura costata (Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the local iconic species, forming, with the Lion Paw, Junonia, Scotch Bonnet, and Alphabet Cone, a “quintet of desirables” for collectors of Southwest Florida shells. Depending on the species, members of the family Pholadidae can burrow on rocks, woods, clay, mudstone, and other hard substrates, forming long cylindrical burrows. Angel Wings burrows in compacted mud and can reach about 180 mm (7 inches) in length. Their long siphons cannot be withdra

Smile for the Camera!

Before the lockdown, while at the Museum's new Beyond Shells exhibit, I caught one of the Wedge Sea Hares, Dolabella auricularia (Lightfoot, 1786), taking a break from munching on seaweed, and scraping the plexiglass tank wall with its radula, probably to nibble on microalgae. The radula, the light-colored, horseshoe-shaped structure in the photo, is the main feeding organ in a gastropod mollusk. The photo also shows the beginning of the alimentary canal (the darker cavity on top of the radula).

An Exquisite Land Snail

In a paper published posthumously in the April 2020 issue of the National Shell Museum’s scientific journal, The Nautilus, Dr. G. Thomas Watters from the Museum of Biological Diversity at Ohio State University in Columbus, and his collaborators, named the new species Rolleia simonaikeni, a half-an-inch wide, attractive land snail from the Dominican Republic. The species was named after Simon Aiken, from the UK, who collected some of the specimens in the study. Dr. Watters had studied the land sn

Shell of the Week: The Striate Nassa

Nassarius consensus (Ravenel, 1861) is one of the few, shallow-water local members of the nassa family, the Nassariidae. A more common species in that group is the Bruised Nassa, Phrontis vibex. The Striate Nassa may grow to 15 mm (about 0.6 inch), and its shell is thick-walled, with about five whorls. The shell sculpture consists of about 8–10 axial ribs that are round in cross-section and crossed by fine spiral threads. The aperture (opening) is thick, with several denticles on its inner surfa

Shell of the Week: The Depressed Slipper Snail

Crepidula depressa Say, 1822 is a local member of the family Calyptraeidae. It is one of the “flat white slipper snails” whose identification is difficult without a glimpse at the soft parts. The species may attain 40 mm (1.6 inch) at most, but is most often found in the 25 mm (about an inch) size range. Unlike the Black-foot Slipper Snail, (Crepidula atrasolea, the “other” local flat, white slipper snail), the Depressed Slipper Snail has a yellowish-cream color on the foot and mantle. Their whi

The Wavy Clio and Its Friends

The Wavy Clio, Clio recurva (Children, 1823) is a pelagic (living in open-water) gastropod mollusk that inhabits all of the world’s oceans, at moderate depth. The adult shell measures about 20 mm (0.8 inch) and is triangular, resembling a partially flattened ice cream cone. The Wavy Clio belongs in the group of pteropod gastropods, which also includes the sea butterflies in the genus Limacina, the “canaries in the coal mine” of ocean acidification. The photo, taken by Smithsonian’s photographer

Shell Art and Shark Eyes Cannibalism

During the Sanibel Shell Show and Fair in March, architect and designer Charles Barr presented an elegant, contemporary-looking piece of artwork displaying Shark Eye shells, Neverita duplicata. The shells were deployed in three identical groups, each containing four rows of four distinct sizes, each row with five shells each, for a total of 60 shells. A close look revealed that many had been drilled by predatory gastropods. Drill holes (red lines in photo) were in 26 shells, or about 43% of the