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.

The Growth of Cone Snail Teeth

Cone snails subdue and kill their prey using harpoon-like teeth that act as hypodermic needles that deliver potent “venom cocktails” to their prey. Each distinct species produces its own, particular cocktail of different toxins. After a strike, each toxin provokes a specific reaction on the prey animal. Worms, fishes, and other mollusks, are the preferred prey items of cone snails, with each cone snail species favoring prey belonging to just one of these categories and not the others. Cone snai

Out of Sight, But Not Out of Mind

Typically, deep-sea animals have not been the focus of conservation concerns, mostly because they are not readily observable and poorly known. In the past few years, scientists studying the animal communities that thrive around deep-sea hydrothermal vents started a discussion on the potential impact resulting from prospection for mining in those unique environments. Hydrothermal vent fields are “auditorium-sized” sites of underwater volcanic activity (usually down to 2.5–three miles in depth) wh

Shell of the Week: The Elegant Glassy Bubble

Haminoea elegans (Gray, 1825) has been found locally measuring up to 17 mm. The shell is very thin, almost elongate-ovate. Sculpture of very fine spiral grooves. There is an orifice on the apical region of shell, known as an apical depression. This is a very variable species; compare with H. antillarum, which is usually smaller, more rounded overall, with less well-defined spiral lines, and lacks the apical depression. Color may be translucent dirty-white, greenish, yellowish, or pink. Animal tr

Decoding Shells with Atlas Obscura

Are you familiar with the cool online resource Atlas Obscura, “the definitive guide to the world’s hidden wonders?” A few weeks ago, Atlas Obscura published an article, penned by Jessica Leigh Hester, on how to “read” shells and bring some sleuthing into your beachcombing experience. In the article, I shared the opportunity to chat about mollusks with my colleague Suzanne Williams, from the Natural History Museum in London. Read the article here.

Shell of the Week: The Different Scale Snail

Cochliolepis differens Rubio, Rolán, & Lee, 2011 is a recently described member of the microgastropod family Tornidae. Its shell reaches about 3 mm (about 0.12 inch) in diameter, and is flattened, compressed, with a sculpture of very fine, wavy growth lines. The spire is very short, not projected, and the umbilicus is open. The aperture is oblique in relation to the shell axis (the imaginary line around which the shell coils during growth). Shell color translucent, glass-like. The shell illustra

Tinted Cantharus, Transparent Egg Cases

The Tinted Cantharus, Gemophos tinctus (Conrad, 1846), is a resident of oyster beds in the bays and estuarine areas of the tropical western Atlantic in general and Southwest Florida in particular. That marine gastropod doesn’t invite much attention, probably because of its size, about 25 to 28 mm (about one to 1.5 inch) long, or prosaic shape and coloration. Tinted Cantharus are known to feed on the barnacles that thrive on oyster reefs, using their ribbon of teeth, the radula, to reach through

Argonaut!

In the last issue, I mentioned the great "black-water" photos by Linda Ianniello; for black-water, read drift-diving, in the middle of the night. Still in the subject of black-water photography, here is a nice image of a female Argonaut, Argonauta argo, photographed in the Philippines by Jeff Laity, and used with his permission. Argonauts are surface-dwelling cephalopods related to octopuses. There are four known species, and mature females in all four build protective cases for their eggs. The

A Very Unusual Clam

In 2015, M.G. “Jerry” Harasewych, a research zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and Ilya Tëmkin, then a postdoctoral fellow in that institution, named a new species of file clam, Mantellina translucens, a species living in moderately deep-water (around 200–300 m, or about 660–990 ft) off Curaçao, in the southern Caribbean Sea. The species name reflects the translucent nature of is delicate shell, which reaches about 41 mm (about 1.6 inches) in size. Remarkably, pri

Shell of the Week: The Gabb Vitrinella

Solariorbis infracarinatus (Gabb, 1881) is a member of the microgastropod family Tornidae with ample distribution in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, found also along the coast of Southwest Florida. Larger shells of the species reach only about 2.0 mm (about 0.08 inch). The shell has a low spire, and the shell periphery (outer shell “edge”) bears a strong spiral keel. The shell base has about 4–5 spiral ribs, but the spire itself lacks any major, visible sculpture. The protoconch projects above

Conchologists of America 2019

The 2019 Conchologists of America Convention took place last week, on Captiva Island, a few miles from the Museum. The convention was a huge success, with well-attended sessions, silent auctions, field trips, and a number of different activities and gatherings. The oral auction of shells and related items raises funds to sponsor the bulk of the COA Academic Grants Program, which this year awarded $25,900 to 15 students. This year’s convention celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the Museum’s Fo