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.

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).

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

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 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

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

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 of the Week: The Ivory Eulima

Melanella eburnea (Mühlfeld, 1824), is a member of the family Eulimidae, marine snails that parasitize echinoderms such as sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and others. The Ivory Eulima has the typical smooth, featureless shell that is typical of members of the family. Depending on the species, they may be endoparasites (living inside the tissues of the host) or ectoparasites (living on the surface of the host’s body). Other local eulimid snails previously treated in this column are the Two-

Shell of the Week: The “Hollow” Alphabet Cones

The photo shows two shells of Alphabet Cone, Conus spurius Gmelin, 1791, that have been clipped by predators, most likely Stone or Flame crabs. The resulting gashes reveal that the earlier whorls, located inside the shell, have disappeared. Some cone snails, as other gastropods do, are known to dissolve their internal shell structures. One of the ensuing benefits, in particular to cones snails that feed on fish or mollusks, is that the new, roomier internal space enables the animal to swallow la

Shell of the Week: The Dog-head Triton

Ranularia cynocephala (Lamarck, 1816) has a sturdy shell that reaches 70 mm (about 2.8 inches). The shell has squarish whorls, a long siphonal canal that may be recurved, and may bear a varix, which denotes the occurrence of a growth stop). The shell sculpture consists of strong spiral cords crossed by weaker axial ribs. The outer lip of the shell aperture is garnished internally with 7 strong, white teeth. The shell color is usually golden-brown, often with a whitish spiral band near the middle

Shell of the Week: The Little Horn Caecum

Meioceras nitidum (Simpson, 1851) reaches only about 2.5 mm (0.1 inch). Caecum snails are mostly uncoiled, resembling little cylinder or tubes; they lose the coiled, early shell whorls at the end of the juvenile stage. The Little Horn Caecum has a tubular shell with bulbous mid-section, and very faint white and grayish markings set on a translucent background. Their shells can be found by sifting and sorting through the sands of Sanibel and Captiva and other parts of the western Atlantic. The im