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.

Now What, Broken Shells?

Not quite... The photo shows two Alphabet Cone (Conus spurius Gmelin, 1791) shells that have been clipped by predators, most likely Stone or Flame crabs. The resulting gashes reveal that parts of the earlier whorls located inside the shell have disappeared. In each shell only the columella, or central pillar, was left behind. Most likely, dissolution of the inner parts in these shells was not a result from the crabs’ fondness for molluscan meals. Some cone snails, along with other gastropods, a

One Tree Snail Gone, a Big Loss to Planet Earth

This past week the digital media was abuzz with news of the passing of George, the tree snail. George was the last surviving Achatinella apexfulva, a species of Hawaiian tree snail that had been extinct in its natural habitat for many years. George, who passed on New Year's Day at an old 14 years of age, was the offspring of captive breeding, part of conservation efforts put in place in Hawai‘i to save the last few surviving species of island land snails. George’s caretakers had hoped to find a

Shell of the Week: The Atlantic False Jingle

Pododesmus rudis (Broderip, 1834) (family Anomiidae) is very similar to the Common Jingle, Anomia simplex, but can be easily separated from this latter by the rougher-looking valves, with coarser shell surface and the almost complete lack of nacre, the iridescent shell layer known as mother-of-pearl. Common and Atlantic False Jingles and other species in the family Anomiidae attach to hard surfaces (such as large, empty shells) using a peg-like byssus. The byssus passes through the bottom valve

The Picky Eating Habits of Eulimid Snails

In last issue’s “Feature Story” we chatted about the eclectic food habits of the Lettered Olive, Americoliva sayana. A posting in Facebook by friend and great underwater photographer Scott Johnson prompted me to look further at the other end of the spectrum, mollusks that are very specific in their meal choices. Marine snails in the family Eulimidae are parasitic on echinoderms, i.e., sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, brittle stars, and others. They can be endoparasitic (living inside its h

The Rosy Keyhole Limpet

The Rosy Keyhole Limpet, Fissurella rosea (Gmelin, 1791), is one of the most common species of keyhole limpets in the western Atlantic and Caribbean region. This species, however, is only very rarely found on our barrier islands. The shell is oval, and the orifice (“keyhole”) is also oval and reinforced internally by a callus, which is in turn delimited by a reddish-pink line. Shell colors and patterns vary, but mostly consist of reddish-brown radial bands of distinctive widths set on a lighter-

The Mangrove Periwinkle

As the vernacular ("common") name implies, the Mangrove Periwinkle, Littoraria angulifera (Lamarck, 1822), inhabits the trunks and branches of mangrove trees, in particular those of the Red Mangrove, Rhizophora mangle. The species may reach 30 mm (about 1.2 inch). Periwinkles are marine snails highly adapted at living almsot completely out of sea water, usually high above the intertidal ("between tides") zone. Mangrove Periwinkles feed, using the teeth of their rasping radula, on the thin fil

Puzzling Dwarf Conchs

Some groups of mollusks, such as cowries and true conchs (Strombidae) may display dwarfism. Shells in the dwarf forms show the features of mature individuals, such as thickened, flared, or ornamented outer shell lip, but at a much smaller size than expected for that species. For different reasons, most probably unknown, those mollusks reach reproductive maturity at smaller size than “normal” individuals of the same species. Environmental factors, such as overcrowding in boring bivalves, could t

Chimney Clams

These two views of the right valve of a Ponderous Ark (Noetia ponderosa) show a large number of boreholes and dwellings made across that structure by the small bivalve known as Stimpson Chimney Clam, Rocellaria stimpsoni Tryon, 1861. Red lines connect external (left) and internal views of each borehole/dwelling. Read more about the curious boring habits of the Stimpson Chimney Clam here.

A Young Nutmeg

On July 25, 2014, I presented the Common Nutmeg, Cancellaria reticulata (Linnaeus, 1767), including a photo of the live snail. Today, I want to show a young, or juvenile, shell of that species. After settling to the bottom (in the case of mollusks with a planktonic, free-living larva) or hatching from an egg capsule (when there is no planktonic larval stage), young marine snails generally resemble adults of their species, though sometimes with different proportions, colors, or shell textures. Th

The Eclectic Food Habits of Lettered Olives

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a great picture is worth much more than that. Consider, for instance, this photo of Lettered Olives, Americoliva sayana (Ravenel, 1834) feeding on the remains of a Speckled Swimming Crab, Arenaeus cribrarius (Lamarck, 1818). The photo was taken at low tide on Marco Island, Florida, by Museum friend (and Shell Ambassador) Amy Tripp. It reminds me of a “clean-up crew” of vultures around roadkill, or hyenas feasting on an antelope carcass. Lettered Olives ha