Mollusk of the Year 2025!
For a few years now, the Senckenberg Museum Frankfurt and Unitas Malacologica have been promoting the election of “Mollusks of the Year.”...
Author Archives: José H. Leal
Shell of the Week: The Stocky Cerith
Cerithium litteratum could just as well be called the “Lettered Cerith,” as one of the meanings of the Latin word litteratum is...
Shell Growth and Repair
Another cool production from ChangingSeas.tv (WPBT, South Florida PBS) starring yours truly, this one a short clip about shell growth...
Scallops of Southwest Florida
It's scallops time! These are the scallops (family Pectinidae) that may be found on the shores of Southwest Florida: 1 – Atlantic Calico...
Shell of the Week: The False Angel Wing
Hello! A member of the Venus clam family Veneridae, Petricolaria pholadiformis gets its name from a superficial similarity with the...
Fossil Cone Shells and UV Light
Last September 13 I discussed how ultraviolet light (UV, aka “black light”) reveals structurally distinctive shell parts, using as an...
Mussels of Southwest Florida
This is a sampling of the local species of the family Mytilidae, which are almost always neglected in private shell collections. (1)...
Shell of the Week: The Smith’s Nutmeg
Axelella smithii reaches 17 mm (about 0.7 inches). The shell is relatively thick and the shell sculpture includes about 8–10 raised...
Shell of the Week: The Chalcedony Phos
Antillophos chalcedonius is a relatively small (reaching 17 mm, or about 0.67 inch) gastropod, that displays a shell sculpture of strong spiral (“revolving”) threads and well-spaced axial (“vertical”) ridges. The color pattern shows variations of a white background and brownish patches that are more-or-less aligned with the axial ridges. The species is found throughout the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Florida Keys, Bahamas, and the Caribbean Basin southward to Colombia. Antillophos chalcedonius was d
The Local Muricidae
This is the first of a series depicting some of the most biodiverse families of marine mollusks from Sanibel and Captiva islands. Here are ten relatively common shallow-water species of drills and murex snails in the family Muricidae. (More species are present in deeper water offshore.) Click on the species name to see their entries in our Southwest Florida Shells guide. They are: (1) Cabrit’s Murex (Vokesimurex cabritii); (2) Pitted Murex (Favartia cellulosa); (3) Mauve-Mouth Drill (Calotrophon