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 Biscayne Vitrinella

With adult shells reaching only about 2 mm (about 0.08 inch) in diameter, Teinostoma biscaynense Pilsbry & McGinty, 1945 is one of the smallest members of the family Tornidae in the western Atlantic. The shell has a low spire, is flattened, depressed, and its periphery (outer shell “edge”) is softly angled. The shell spire and base lack any sculpture except for coarse, irregular growth lines. The protoconch is sunken within the adult shell. The umbilicus is completely obliterated by a whitish, o

Shell of the Week: The Interrupted Vitrinella

Parviturboides interruptus (C.B. Adams, 1850) is a member of the microgastropod family Tornidae with ample distribution in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and is found also along the coast of Southwest Florida. Larger shells of the species reach only about 1.5 mm (about 0.06 inch) in diameter. The shell has a raised spire, and is covered by strong, raised spiral cords, that may number as many as 15 in the last whorl. The umbilicus is present, but small. The shell color is translucent-white.

Jingle Double Whammy!

The Common Jingle, Anomia simplex d’Orbigny, 1853, is a bivalve from the tropical western Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. They live in shallow-water, attached to dead shells and other hard structures. Many bivalves that make a living attached to hard surfaces rely on a byssus for that attachment. In mussels and other bivalves, the byssus consists of strong, elastic protein fibers; in jingles (Family Anomiidae), the byssus is solid, pillar-like, and made of a tough composite material, a mixture

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

Hi, Piglet Squid!

Check out this great footage of a Piglet Squid (Heliconcranchia species) shot early this month at 1,385 m depth off the Palmyra Atoll in the central Pacific. The video was shot by the crew of the Exploration Vessel Nautilus, run by Dr. Robert Ballard on behalf of the Corps of Exploration-Ocean Exploration Trust. Piglet Squids live in deep-water, have big eyes, a pig snout-like siphon, and arms that look like deer antlers!

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

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

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

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