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Erin Southerland

February 28, 2025 by Erin Southerland

Michael J. Bainbridge Wins the 2024 Carnegie Mineralogical Award

by Travis Olds, Assistant Curator of Minerals
March 4, 2025

I am pleased to announce Michael J. Bainbridge as the winner of the 2024 Carnegie Mineralogical Award. Established in 1987 through the generosity of The Hillman Foundation Inc., the award honors outstanding contributions in mineralogical preservation, conservation, and education.

Michael is the Assistant Curator of Mineralogy at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Over the course of his career, he has elevated the field of mineral photography, published in leading mineralogical publications, and contributed to groundbreaking works such as Minerals of the Grenville Province: New York, Ontario, and Québec.

Travis Olds and Michael Bainbridge holding the Carnegie Mineralogical Award.
Travis Olds and Michael Bainbridge holding the Carnegie Mineralogical Award at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

Michael has blended art and science to preserve and showcase the beauty of minerals, inspiring collectors and researchers alike. He has immortalized some of the rarest and best-of-species minerals, and this award recognizes the many wonderful contributions he has made to mineral heritage through his lens. 

Among his achievements, Bainbridge’s mineral photography has been featured in important works, such as The Pinch Collection at the Canadian Museum of Nature, and numerous articles in Rocks and Minerals and The Mineralogical Record. His work has ensured that specimens of scientific and cultural significance are preserved and appreciated by future generations. As a co-author of Minerals of the Grenville Province, Bainbridge helped document the mineralogical heritage of one of North America’s most storied geological regions. His contributions to Mindat.org and numerous mineral symposia have further enriched the global mineralogical community.

“I love to teach, and I love to tell stories, but I think both are fueled by a desire to learn for myself,” said Michael, reflecting on his achievements. “I’ve always been technically minded but artistically inclined, so combining my passion for minerals with my love of photography has proven the perfect vehicle for me to pursue and share both the scientific and the aesthetic. It has afforded me access to some of the world’s great collections and sparked collaborations with some of the community’s most influential amateurs and professionals alike.

“Among my proudest accomplishments, the Pinch book stands in high relief. Pushing the boundaries of photomicroscopy in documenting some of the smallest and rarest specimens of Mont Saint-Hilaire has been both challenging and rewarding. Ensuring top-notch reproductions for Lithographie’s publications has proven a similarly worthy endeavor. The significant finds I have made as a field collector are also close to my heart. But seeing new people come to the hobby through doors I have helped to open—whether through the Recreational Geology Project or co-founding the new Ottawa Valley Mineral Club—has perhaps been the most rewarding of all.

“More than anything, I am grateful for the many opportunities to share what I have learned along the way. And now, I look forward to the next chapter in my career as I assist in curating Canada’s national collection at the Canadian Museum of Nature. I am truly honored and humbled by this recognition of my small part in helping to present and preserve the world’s mineralogical heritage for future generations.”

I had the honor of presenting the award to Michael at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show on February 15, 2025. Congratulations, Michael! 

2025 Carnegie Mineralogical Award

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2025 Carnegie Mineralogical Award, and the deadline is November 15, 2025. Eligible candidates include educators, private mineral enthusiasts and collectors, curators, museums, mineral clubs and societies, mineral symposiums, universities, and publications. For information, contact Travis Olds, Assistant Curator, Section of Minerals & Earth Sciences, at 412-622-6568 or oldst@carnegiemnh.org.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: mineralogical award, minerals, minerals and earth sciences, Travis Olds

October 10, 2024 by Erin Southerland

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2024 in The Greater Pittsburgh Area  

by Amy Covell-Murthy, Archaeology Collection Manager and Head of the Section of Anthropology 

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is observed in many US cities and states alongside Columbus Day, and I would like to suggest some ways to observe the holiday for those who do not claim Indigenous heritage. As the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) liaison at Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), I have the privilege of working closely with Indigenous people and communities on the research, repatriation, and standards of care for the cultural assemblages stewarded in the collection. It is my absolute pleasure to help provide a platform for authentic voices and Indigenous ways of knowing to be brought into the narratives, policies, and protocols that shape our vision for the future of the museum. 

In a state like Pennsylvania with no habitable federally recognized Indigenous land, Native people are all too often seen as existing only in the past, but many First Nations people live, work, and play right alongside us in the Greater Pittsburgh Area and beyond. Indigenous Peoples’ Day should not be a memorial, but a recognition of the important history and cultural heritage of those who are the past, present, and future caretakers of this land.  

Preparing Fry Bread

Photo by: John E Rodgers/Ogahpah Communications 

Likewise, museum exhibits should reflect the present and future of Indigenous people, not only the past. The first iteration of a new exhibit series in the Alcoa Foundation Hall of American Indians opens on October 13 to commemorate repatriation work with the Quapaw Nation. Co-curators Betty Gaedtke and Carrie Vee Wilson worked together to bring their first-person stories to this new showcase that they have chosen to call Keeping Traditions Alive. Visiting the exhibit or one in your area is an excellent way to honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  

Here are some more ways to respectfully celebrate on October 14, 2024.  

Learn About the People Who Have Called Pittsburgh Home 

Many different cultural groups have occupied the Upper Ohio River Valley including but not limited to the Delaware/Lenape, the Haudenosaunee, the Shawnee, and the Wyandotte. The Osage Nation also claims origin in the Ohio River Valley, and you can learn about all these nations on their official websites. I also suggest hitting up your local library to check out books on these groups as well as the cultural traditions and ancestors who came before them. This region was home to those who are often referred to as the Adena, Hopewell, and Monongahela. But keep in mind, we have no idea what they called themselves.  

Here are some resources: 

Haudenosaunee Confederacy 

Delaware Tribe 

Absentee Shawnee Tribe

Wyandotte Nation 

The Osage Nation 

Educate Yourself About Indigenous History in Pennsylvania 

Many First Pennsylvanians were forced from their homelands and infected with unfamiliar diseases by colonizers. Later the first assimilation school was created in Carlisle, PA and used as a model for 24 more of these institutions whose primary goal was to force Indigenous children to abandon their Native languages and customs. In the 1960s, the building of the Kinzua Dam forced Seneca Nation citizens to move into the State of New York, breaking the 1794 Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Indigenous communities thrive despite these events and institutions, but it is important to recognize and not try to hide these gruesome parts of our shared American history. You can find more information about these examples on these websites:  

Kinzua Dam – Seneca Iroquois National Museum 

Removal History of the Delaware Tribe 

Indian Boarding Schools’ Traumatic Legacy, And The Fight To Get Native Ancestors Back 

Support Local Indigenous Groups  

The Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center (COTRAIC) is a regional intertribal nonprofit that promotes the socio-economic development of the Native American community and others who experience the same type of economic difficulties in the Greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area. One way to support them is to plan to attend their annual Pow Wow that is held in Dorseyville, just outside of Pittsburgh, in late September. Learn more about their Early Childhood Education, Native American Elders, Veterans, and Employment programs at COTRAIC.org and on their Facebook page.  

COTRAIC’s Singing Winds Food Pantry is an excellent resource to help people meet their food needs.  Learn more, donate, or sign up to receive support from the food pantry.

Honor the Land

Planting Native Pennsylvanian plants is a wonderful way to honor our connection to the Earth and to provide food and shelter for the diverse species who live here. You can learn about how Indigenous People use trees, ferns, flowers, vegetables, fruits, and grasses to enhance their quality of life. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania offer suggestions for those who are interested. 

Quapaw Pow wow Grand Entry, 2024. Photo by: John E Rodgers/Ogahpah Communications 

Support Indigenous Artists, Authors, Film Makers, and Musicians

You have so many options! The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a list of Indigenous musical artists to watch out for in 2024. My personal favorite this year is Sekawnee. Check out their video for the song “Nations” with frequent collaborators, Chasé Scanz and EfrainYB.  

Check out the Sundance Institute Indigenous Program that champions Indigenous-created stories in a global scale. 

The New York Public Library posted a wonderful resource for finding recent works by Indigenous authors. 

You can also support Indigenous artists by purchasing art through the online gift shop of the Seneca Iroquois National Museum/Onöhsagwë:de’ Cultural Center or take a drive up to purchase something in person and see the new longhouse that they’ve built behind the museum.    

Help Change Derogatory Mascots and Place Names

Sign petitions, attend community forums, and advocate for the changing of harmful stereotypes and offensive signage in our community. From the Cleveland Guardians to Hemlock Hollow Road, there are many instances of this happening around us.The Haudenosaunee Nationals Lacrosse Team, who hope to make it to the 2028 Olympics, changed their name in 2022 to reflect their collective identity. 

Consider Donating Time or Resources

The Seneca Iroquois National Museum/ Onöhsagwë:de’ Cultural Center is only a few hours’ drive from Pittsburgh and occasionally may be looking for volunteers. Check their website and follow their Instagram and Facebook accounts for more information. 

 If you are able, here are just a few organizations who can use your help. 

Advancing Indigenous People in STEM 

Native American Agriculture Fund 

NDN Collective 

Association of American Indian Affairs 

So, join me once again in celebrating the cultural diversity of Indigenous People throughout the history of our region. Remember that the best places to start educating yourself are local libraries and museums here in Pittsburgh or wherever you live.  

Amy L. Covell-Murthy (she/her) is the Archaeology Collection Manager/Head of the Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. 

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Blog author: Covell-Murthy, Amy
Publication date: October 10, 2024

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Amy Covell-Murthy, Indigenous Peoples Day, Keeping Traditions Alive

August 16, 2024 by Erin Southerland

Natural History Collection Managers: The Stewards of Time Travel 

by Serina Brady and Mariana Marques

For centuries, naturalists have collected the living world with the primary goal of understanding the diversity and complexity of our planet. In vast shelves and cabinets located in natural history museums, we find a diversity of specimens used daily by researchers, students, naturalists, and conservationists from around the world. These collections are not just archives of the past, but they also play a crucial role in addressing present-day challenges. By documenting the diversity of life, natural history collections provide a wealth of information that can be used to tackle issues such as climate change, pandemics, pathogen dispersals, deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and biodiversity loss. They can be considered the world’s most comprehensive and complex library, serving as a valuable resource for understanding and addressing the health of our planet. 

Each specimen can be seen as a unique document or book recording an aspect of life on Earth at a particular time and place. They testify to the existence of a given species in a given locality and at a particular time, and they have a fundamental role as a guarantee of the scientific method: they allow objective observation that can be replicable. Natural history collections are an unparalleled source of information. For instance, a single bird or reptile specimen can provide data on its species, its habitat, its diet, and even its health. This wealth of information continues to allow researchers to understand better the past, the present, and the future of biodiversity, as well as the health of our planet – from local communities to the entire Earth.  

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Alcohol House, Collection of Amphibians and Reptiles. ©Photo by: Luis Ceríaco. 
Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Collection of Birds. ©Photo by: Luis Ceríaco. 

These collections are usually housed in natural history museums. These museums are research, conservation, education, and public outreach hubs. Their collections are not limited to public exhibitions; in fact, the majority are housed in storage locations, generally out of sight and knowledge of the public. The process of collecting and storing these specimens is methodical. Each specimen is carefully collected, identified, and cataloged, then stored in a controlled environment to ensure long-term preservation. This process ensures that these specimens, often fragile and irreplaceable, are protected and can continue to be used for research and education for future generations.  

Natural History Collections: a Tool to Face Global Changes 

How can a specimen collected more than 100 years ago still be relevant today? Historical collections, like the one housed at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, provide baseline data points. These initial measurements or observations serve as a starting point for future comparisons. By providing a snapshot of life on Earth at a particular time and place, these specimens allow us to study change over time. The first and most crucial step is to gather those baseline data points!  

From their early days, natural history collections’ primary goal was to inventory all life on Earth. However, with new cutting-edge technology, researchers can recover different data from historical specimens, data that the original collector didn’t even imagine. For example, when birds were collected from the U.S. Rust Belt, collectors didn’t realize that the specimens would be used to infer information about the history of pollution. Similarly, in the early twentieth century, the collectors of salamanders in the Appalachian woods didn’t even realize that some of those specimens were already infected with a pathogen that is devastating some of the world amphibian populations today.  

However, because specimens were collected, we can now map the expansion of this pathogen through time or trace the amount of black carbon in the air over time through birds’ feathers to help fight and understand climate change. Part of the job of Collection Managers like us is not just to preserve and maintain the existing collections, but also to anticipate and predict the questions future researchers will be asking. This proactive approach ensures we gather today’s data to answer tomorrow’s questions. Specimens collected over a century ago are actively used today to answer questions about current and future environmental changes.  

Specimens at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History collected during the early 1900s continued to have a significant role in research questions. These specimens give researchers insight into environmental changes through time, such as soot deposited on bird feathers or the presence of pathogens such as the chytrid fungus on amphibian populations across a specific time and place. Top: Two Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) specimens, one from 1895 (bottom) and the other from 1993 (top), showing the change in air quality over time (DuBay and Fuldner 2017). © Photo by Luis Ceríaco. Below: Amphibian specimen of Common Mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) being swabbed by a student from the University of Pittsburgh (Richards-Zawacki Lab) to detect the presence of the amphibian chytrid fungus – Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. ©Photo by: Rachel Verdi. 

New applications of technologies, such as computed tomography (CT) scans, provide novel insights and usages for specimens. CT scans allow a complete 3D model of a specimen, including access to its internal morphology without damaging it. Using next-generation sequencing, scientists can use fragmented and degraded DNA for advanced analyses such as phylogenetic and phylogeographic analysis. These specialized methods allow us to study species’ evolutionary relationships and geographic distribution. These advanced techniques are just some of the ways natural history collections are being used to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge.  

CT scans provide details of internal anatomy, presence of parasites, reproduction, etc., without damaging the specimen. CT scans are a significant technological advance for fields such as taxonomy, developmental and evolutionary biology, and studying functional morphology for natural history specimens. © Edward Stanley, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida (oVert – OpenVertebrate project). 

A Biodiversity Backup 

Continuing to grow our collections is not only scientifically essential but undeniably needed. Currently, 1.8 million species have been formally described to science, although worldwide experts predict that around 8.75 million species still await to be discovered, described, and named. Given current extinction rates, we are racing against time to describe the remaining 86% of the world’s species, many of which may become extinct before we know they even existed! 

New species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and insects continue to be discovered worldwide, sometimes based on specimens tucked away in a museum for decades! These collections are not just archives of the past but also living libraries that continue to grow and evolve as new species are discovered. Each new discovery adds to our understanding of the natural world and underscores the importance of these collections in documenting and preserving Earth’s biodiversity. These new specimens contribute to our most significant and longest dataset of the natural world. But just as a library that stops acquiring new books, a natural history collection that doesn’t add new specimens will eventually lose its scientific value and relevancy. If we don’t continue to add physical proof of today’s biodiversity, we create unfillable gaps in one of our most powerful natural history data sets. Today is tomorrow’s past, and natural history collections act as a biodiversity backup of our planet!  

Serina Brady is Collection Manager of Birds and Mariana Marques is Collection Manager of Amphibians and Reptiles at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Related Content

Risk Assessment, or How to Keep Your Collection Intact

Type Specimens: What Are They and Why Are They Important?

Staff Favorites: Dolls in the Museum’s Care

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Blog author: Brady, Serina; Marques, Mariana
Publication date: August 16, 2024

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: amphibians and reptiles, Birds, Mariana Marques, Science News, Serina Brady

August 9, 2024 by Erin Southerland

What’s in a Name? The History of the Naming of the Eastern Mole 

by John Wible

In the tenth edition of the “Systema Naturae” (1758), the Swedish botanist and natural historian Carl Linnaeus recognized eight orders of mammals, all of which include species that today are not particularly closely related. His order Bestiae included pigs, armadillos, hedgehogs, moles, shrews, and opossums. Of these, the hedgehogs, moles, and shrews are considered today to form a natural group, with the others coming from very far-flung branches of the mammal tree of life.  

For the shrews, Linnaeus named three species of Sorex, Sorex araneus, Sorex cristatus, and Sorex aquaticus, with their habitats Europe, Pennsylvania, and America, respectively. Sorex araneus is recognized today as the common shrew (see image), distributed in Great Britain, much of the European continent, and far into Russia. However, the other two are not shrews, but are moles! Today, we recognize these as the star-nosed mole, Condylura cristata, and the Eastern mole, Scalopus aquaticus (see image). The former has a broad distribution in Pennsylvania with the latter only in the eastern part of the state. 

common shrew and a worm
Common shrew, Sorex araneus. Photo credit: Soricida, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 
close-up of an eastern mole
Eastern mole, Scalopus aquaticus. Photo credit: Kenneth Catania, Vanderbilt University, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Just before the shrews in the tenth edition, Linnaeus named two species of moles, Talpa europaea and Talpa asiatica, with their habitats Europe and Siberia, respectively. Given the remarkable similarity in body form between the Old World and New World moles, it is surprising that Linnaeus did not recognize these four species (Sorex cristatus, Sorex aquaticus, Talpa europaea, and Talpa asiatica) as closely related.  

Regarding the Eastern mole, subsequent nineteenth century authors realized Sorex aquaticus did not belong in the shrew genus Sorex. However, it was bounced around between several mole genera, including Talpa, and it was not until 1905 that the Latin binomial we use today, Scalopus aquaticus, was first used, 147 years after Linnaeus! The formal naming of species is not static, but evolves over time as we discover more about our natural world that causes us to reconsider and reevaluate past practices. Changing the shrew aspect of the common name lagged behind the formal one, as it was not for quite some time that the shrew moniker imparted by Linnaeus disappeared. A halfway point is in the famous 1846 “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America” by John J. Audubon and Reverend John Bachman, where they called it the common American shrew mole.  

From the short text in the “Systema Naturae” where Linnaeus named Sorex aquaticus, his motivation for identifying the Eastern mole as a shrew is unclear. Equally or perhaps more enigmatic is his motivation for using the specific name aquaticus. A direct translation of Sorex aquaticus is “water shrew,” with the strong implication that this mammal lived in the water or at least spent considerable time in the water. However, Linnaeus did not travel to America and so never saw Sorex aquaticus in the wild. The Eastern mole is a fossorial (burrowing) animal that spends most of its life underground with enormous forepaws for digging. Skin covers its tiny eyes, although it does perceive light and dark, and it lacks an external ear. Maybe its enlarged forepaws were viewed as flipper-like by Linnaeus. Yet, these paws resemble those of the Old World Talpa named by Linnaeus as true moles. In 1936, mammalogist A.V. Arlton stated, “The term “aquaticus,” as applied to our common species refers to the webbed hind feet, which indicated to some early writers a possible use in swimming” (Journal of Mammalogy, 17, p. 355). Unfortunately, Arlton did not name names for these early writers! Consequently, his statement cannot be fact checked. The bottom line is that in his description of Sorex aquaticus, Linnaeus did not mention webbing for either the fore- or hind feet. And ultimately, as the namer of the species, it is Linnaeus’ motivation that we need to know.  

There are some general rules for naming new species. For example, you can’t name a new species after yourself. In the Linnean era, the general trend was to apply Latin or Greek descriptors that would capture some aspect of the organism in question, a tradition continued today by most authors. For instance, our species, Homo sapiens, was named by Linnaeus and it translates to “wise man.” While we might debate the appropriateness of that as the binomial for our species, there is no debate that Sorex aquaticus is inappropriate for our ground dwelling Eastern mole. 

John Wible is Curator of Mammals at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Related Content

Why Do Some Shrews Have Dark Red Teeth?

The Naming of the Shrew

Star-Nosed Mole: The Nose That “Sees”

Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Blog author: Wible, John
Publication date: August 9, 2024

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: John Wible, mammals, Science News

August 2, 2024 by Erin Southerland

The Moon Snails Neverita duplicata and Euspira heros: Cannibal Predators of the Sea! … who also enjoy a nice algae salad

by Sabrina Spiher Robinson and Tim Pearce

Imagine you’re a clam, hanging out in your cozy little hole under shallow ocean water, with your siphon out, just filtering lunch out of the water current, happy as a…you. Then, all of a sudden, something flips you gently out of that hole.

You pull in your siphon and your foot, clamp shut your valves. You’re pretty tough to get open, strong adductor muscles keep your two shells held tightly together, and you’ve survived danger by closing up shop and waiting before. And nothing seems to be trying to pry you open, even though something has wrapped itself around you, and is now pulling you down into the sand with it. Then:

scrape scrape scrape

scrape scrape scrape

scrape scrape scrape

Or imagine you’re a young moon snail, Neverita duplicata – one of the most common species of moon snails that live on the eastern seaboard of North America. You’re a gastropod with a lovely round grayish shell, such that people call it a “shark eye,” and you’ve got a huge foot that can come out of that shell and cover almost all of your body – or all of your prey’s body!  But at the moment you’re just cruising along the sand, slurping at a bit of detritus. Suddenly, you’re enveloped by something. You instinctively pull your body into your shell and tightly close your door-like operculum for safety. Then your aperture is covered by…something familiar?  Then:

scrape scrape scrape

scrape scrape scrape

scrape scrape scrape

It doesn’t matter how tightly the clam clamps, or how mighty the young snail’s foot, both are going to come to the same fate, slowly. 

scrape scrape scrape

scrape scrape scrape

scrape scrape scrape

Eventually, your shell is penetrated. A rasping radula – a mollusk’s organ containing its teeth – has bored a hole through your shell with the help of a gentle acid secreted by a gland by the mouth, and then you feel a burning: gastric juices are being pumped through the hole to begin to digest your flesh. Your killer begins to slurp you up, right where you lie, wrapped up in their hug, as you’re slowly eaten alive.

The young moon snail might have figured out who its killer was before the end: that’s how it eats too. The thing is, moon snails are cannibals, the larger preying on the smaller.

There are hundreds of kinds of moon snails all over the world, but the ones that are probably most familiar to beach goers on the eastern coast of the USA are two species also commonly called “shark eyes” – Neverita duplicata and Euspira heros. From the top, they’re hard to tell apart (the spire on E. heros is a little pointier than on N. duplicata) but once you flip them over, it becomes easy to distinguish them: N. duplicata, the Atlantic moon snail, has a big callus over its umbilicus, and E. heros, the Northern moon snail, doesn’t.  Technically, only the Atlantic moon snail has a shark eye shell, but since they’re often mixed up with Northern moon snails, the term shark eye is sometimes applied to them too. 

N. duplicata, left; E. heros, right. Photo credit: Sabrina Spiher Robinson
N. duplicata, left; E. heros, right. Photo credit: Sabrina Spiher Robinson

These two moon snails aren’t the only marine gastropods that drill their prey and digest them alive to suck them up for dinner – lots of marine gastropods are predatory drills. But moon snails have distinct boreholes that allow people to identify when a shell has been bored specifically by a moon snail – scientists can even tell the difference between the Atlantic and Northern species’ holes. These “countersunk” holes look like little funnels, wider on the outside of the shell than on the inside. Other kinds of drilling snails leave behind straight-sided holes.

These unique boreholes allow scientists to track the evolution of moon snails from the Miocene to recent times. One group of researchers found that moon snail cannibalism might have driven a kind of coevolution between and among moon snail species. Because one moon snail can make dangerous prey for a fellow moon snail predator, over time moon snails seem to have learned to drill other moon snails at a spot on their shells that allowed the predator to cover the prey’s entire aperture, preventing the strong foot of their prey from fighting back. This means boring through a thicker part of the shell, however, so it takes longer to hold down and bore through the prey snail’s shell. But the record of natural selection in fossils throughout time suggests the added cost must be worth the benefit of moving target drilling zones. Meanwhile, small moon snails almost always lose out to larger ones when attacked, so both N. duplicata and E. heros have evolved to get bigger and bigger over time – although a bigger snail is also a more enticing snack target. Same-sized moon snails don’t even bother to attack one another, suggesting that a fellow moon snail is just too dangerous a prey when the winner of the battle between snails is a toss-up. As evidence that these are often battles between predator and prey snails, there are many incomplete boreholes found – a moon snail started attacking another moon snail, but only managed to get the job halfway done before the prey moon snail escaped. [1]

To be fair, moon snails aren’t just vicious cannibals – they also enjoy the snail equivalent of a nice salad. Another study that analyzed the tissues of moon snails revealed that their bodies have the chemical signatures of omnivores. The technique is called stable isotope analysis, wherein scientists use the ratio of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in an animal’s body to determine its diet, in broad terms. Carbon exists in three isotope forms, meaning the number of protons is the same in all three atoms, but the number of neutrons is different in each (carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14); Nitrogen also has three isotope forms, nitrogen-14, nitrogen-15, and nitrogen-16. The vast majority of carbon on Earth is carbon-12, which is a stable isotope, as is carbon-13, meaning they do not decay over time; nitrogen-14 and -15 are stable, and make up the vast majority of nitrogen atoms. Different plants and animals have different ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes. The ratios of isotopes in plants and animals differ and these differences transfer to the body of the consumer, and so the isotope ratios of a meat-eating animal will differ from those of a vegetarian animal, and an omnivorous animal will be different again. Scientists were surprised to find that wild moon snail isotopes suggested they also ate non-animals, so to check their findings they fed captive moon snails nothing but clams, and then tested their isotopes – which looked exactly as one would expect in an all-meat diet. Apparently the wild moon snails were actually eating things other than meat, probably algae. This was a big deal, since so much of the literature on moon snails is about their predatory drilling! [2]

Moon snail shells are a relatively common find on east-coast beaches (and another moon snail, Euspira lewisii, is a common find on the west coast), but if you’re at the beach this summer, there’s more to look for than just shells – moon snails also leave behind very distinctive egg nests, often called “sand collars.” The fertilized female snail nestles into a little hole in the sand (as all moon snails do during the day when they’re not feeding) and produces a sheet of mucus, which she mixes with sand and pushes up to the surface, as she does so, the sheet curls around her shell and eventually right around to form a ring. This fusion of mucus and sand grains solidifies, she attaches her thousands of eggs to it, and then covers those with another layer of mucus and sand. Once the eggs are ready to hatch after a few weeks, when the next high tide comes along the eggs let go thousands of little larvae called veligers, which will drift off to finish developing into baby snails who will eventually settle into the intertidal zone and start lives for themselves. Once the eggs hatch, the collar becomes brittle and disintegrates, but if you find one that’s still plastic-y on the beach, leave it! There are thousands of tiny baby vicious predators in there waiting to hatch! Awww.

A sand collar full of shark eye eggs. Image credit: Blenni, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sabrina Spiher Robinson is Collection Assistant for the Section of Mollusks and Tim Pearce is Head of the Section of Mollusks at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

References

[1] Gregory P. Dietl and Richard R. Alexander, Post-Miocene Shift in Stereotypic Naticid Predation on Confamilial Prey from the Mid-Atlantic Shelf: Coevolution with Dangerous Prey PALAIOS Vol. 15, No. 5 (Oct., 2000), pp. 414-429

[2] Casey MM, Fall LM and Dietl GP, You Are What You Eat: Stable Isotopic Evidence Indicates That the Naticid Gastropod Neverita duplicata Is an Omnivore. Front. Ecol. Evol. 4:125. (2016) doi: 10.3389/fevo.2016.00125

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Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Blog author: Pearce, Timothy A.; Robinson, Sabrina Spiher
Publication date: July 31, 2024

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: mollusks, Sabrina Spiher Robinson, Science News, Section of Mollusks, Spotlight on Science, Spotlight on Science Mollusks, Tim Pearce

July 26, 2024 by Erin Southerland

The Busyconidae Whelks, Homebodies of the East Coast

by Sabrina Spiher Robinson and Tim Pearce

We try not to have strong favorites among the mollusks of the world in the CMNH Section of Mollusks, but it’s hard not to love the whelks. They leave behind big, beautiful shells for shell collectors on our east coast and Gulf beaches; they’re instantly recognizable as a family— Busyconidae — and pretty easy to tell apart at the species level by an amateur. Some of the species are sinistral, left-coiling snails, which are otherwise rare among gastropods. They live long and move slowly, reminding us all that slow and steady is an optimal way to approach life.  They taste good! The traditional Italian American dish scungilli is often described as “conch,” but conchs only live in our warm southern waters, and what is usually sold in American markets for scungilli is actually whelk meat. (In Italy, they also eat sea snails, under a lot of different names, but the Mediterranean has different families of marine gastropods.)

three view of a lightning whelk
The lightning whelk, Sinistrofulgar perversum, a left-coiling gastropod. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Now, whelks are maybe not the most sophisticated of marine snails: unlike some gastropods with eye stalks and relatively good sight abilities, whelks have eye spots, which don’t do much more than detect light and dark. Studies of their sense of smell reveal them to have a tenuous ability at best to follow scent trails of prey in the water, and they’ve been observed just kind of slowly zig-zagging back and forth in the mud, apparently hoping to run into a clam. Once they find a clam, some whelks wedge the edge of their own shell between the valves of their prey, and just pry for as long as it takes to pop it open. Other species of whelk rock the edge of their own shells back and forth against the opening of a bivalve, slowly chipping its valves apart. 

I mean, look: it isn’t much, but it’s honest work. Whelks are just a great family of sea snails. And Busycon whelks are endemic to the east coast of North America, meaning they’ve only ever been found here. Hometown heroes, if you will.

Our east coast whelks are committed homebodies partly because they evolved relatively late among mollusk families, in the Oligocene, a period spanning from 33.9 – 23 million years ago.  The family Busyconidae first emerged in the fossil record in the Mississippian Sea, which had been a shallow extension of what is now the Gulf of Mexico that reached far inland along the route of what is now the Mississippi River. At the end of the Oligocene, the planet’s climate cooled and as ice formed at the poles, sea levels fell, eliminating this inland sea in North America — the whelks then found themselves in the Gulf.

Mollusks have existed on Earth clear back to the Cambrian Era, 540 million years ago. Most modern marine gastropod families began evolving earlier than the Busycons, which meant they were around when all the continents on Earth were one giant supercontinent called Pangea. But Pangea had already broken apart before the Busycons appeared in the fossil record.

Now, here’s the thing, if you are a marine gastropod only suited to shallow, intertidal waters, and you come into being along the coast of a supercontinent, given enough time, your family can spread around the entire coastline of that supercontinent. Then, as it begins to break up, your populations break up with it, and in a few dozen millions of years, your family has populations all over the Earth. But if you are a marine gastropod only suited to shallow, intertidal waters, and you come into being when the North Atlantic has already split from Europe, your family can’t make it across the open sea to go anywhere else. And so, the Busycon family of whelks found themselves in the Gulf of Mexico, near the shore, and began to spread from there, east and west, south and north, until today they exist from the Yucatan Peninsula up to about Cape Cod (it gets too cold for them further north).

five views of a knobbed whelk
Knobbed whelk, Busycon carica. H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Buccinidae whelks, however, can handle arctic cold. They first evolved in the Northeast Pacific Ocean, and they eventually spread along the coastlines across the Bering Strait and down onto the North American west coast, across the Canadian Arctic to the North American east coast and the European eastern Atlantic. They’ve actually made it almost everywhere! But Buyscons can’t take that kind of cold.

There are other factors that limit their spread, one is the ocean currents around the Gulf and western Atlantic. Although Cuba is just 90 miles from the Florida Keys, whelks, which are plentiful in Florida, have never managed to cross the Gulf Stream to colonize Cuba. But one of the main things that keep Busycon whelks from getting anywhere is that, unlike most marine mollusks, they never have a free-swimming larval form, in which they could disperse more widely on ocean currents. Most marine snails have a life cycle that starts with an egg and then proceeds after hatching to a free-swimming larva. Basically, most baby marine mollusks are plankton. And in this state, they can float around and sometimes disperse pretty far afield on ocean currents. As long as they end up in suitable habitat when it’s time for them to metamorphosize into their adult forms, marine mollusks can theoretically end up living hundreds of miles from where they were spawned.

But whelks don’t have this free-swimming period in their youth. Adult females are inseminated directly by males and then lay strings of egg cases (which are also reliably common finds on our eastern beaches) in which the little baby whelks grow and hatch as fully formed miniature snails. Then they just crawl off.

knobbed whelk egg case
The egg case of a knobbed whelk, Busycon carica. Gtm at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

And they’re not very fast crawlers, even for snails. Whelks make their living by eating bivalves, but they’re never in a hurry to find them — in multiple observational studies over many decades, no one has ever seen a Busycon whelk move further than 150 meters in a day, and those go-getters were the outliers; many days whelks barely move at all. Many factors conspire to keep whelks close to their birthplace.

channeled whelk
The channeled whelk, Busycotypus canaliculatus. Credit: Skye McDavid, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Whelk populations are so localized that some researchers think it’s important to identify and treat separately groups of whelks in distinct geographic locations not at all far from each other. In 2022, several scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) published a paper on channeled whelks (Busycotypus canaliculatus) documenting their genetic diversity in different geographic locations. They did this as part of a study of the channeled whelk population in general, to recommend how to manage the whelk fishery. (Whelks are increasingly harvested and sold as “conch” – and sometimes as clam strips!) In America, individual states manage their own fisheries of all kinds, but this isn’t always done well. In order to keep the fishing of any species (fish, mollusk, crab, shrimp, what have you) productive and sustainable, it’s important not to take more from the sea than can be replenished, and not to take animals that haven’t lived long enough to have reproduced (which is why some fisheries have size limits, as a proxy for the age and sexual maturity of the animal being harvested). But without good data on population size as well as age and size at sexual maturity, effective management and limit setting is basically impossible, and too often states don’t err on the side of caution. When allowable takes are too large, or allowed to include juvenile animals, the population of the fishery will plummet, and this has happened in different places and different times among the whelks. So, the VIMS project was meant to contribute data to help manage the whelk fisheries along the east coast sustainably.

The VIMS scientists caught whelks in ten different locations, from Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts down to Charleston, South Carolina, and sequenced their DNA. They found significant genetic divergence between the three sampled populations from the Carolinas and the populations in Virginia and north. But the scientists also found pretty big divergences across all the locations, even in populations as geographically close to one another as Virginia Beach, VA, and the Virginia Eastern Shore, about a hundred miles away across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

Morphologically, all these whelks look pretty much alike, but genetically, they’re very isolated and distinct populations, with very little breeding among locations. Busycon whelks stay so close to home that each of their little geographically specific populations genetically diverge from one another since they never get far enough to meet and mate with whelks in other relatively close locations. The VIMS authors suggested that different whelk populations in different places might require different fishery management based on size at age of maturity, which seemed to change across genetically different populations. And so, it isn’t as simple as managing the “whelk fisheries on the east coast,” or even the “whelk fisheries in Virginia.” Because Channeled whelk populations are so isolated from one another, they might need to be managed as fisheries in Charleston, SC and Ocean City, MD, and so forth, specifically.  [1]

After all that, I should tell you, though, that there is one exception to this east coast endemic story: at some point about a hundred years ago, a population of channeled whelks was introduced to San Francisco Bay. They’ve been prospering there ever since, but they can’t spread any further on the west coast because the water outside the bay is too cold for them.  That’s an extremely genetically isolated population, in an unusual environment for Busycon whelks – maybe someday it might become distinct enough from its east coast forebears to become its own species?

[1] Askin, Samantha E.; Fisher, Robert A.; Biesack, Ellen E.; Robins, Rick; and McDowell, Jan, Population Genetic Structure in Channeled Whelk Busycotypus canaliculatus along the U.S. Atlantic Coast (2022). Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. DOI: 10.1002/tafs.10374

Sabrina Spiher Robinson is Collection Assistant for the Section of Mollusks and Tim Pearce is Head of the Section of Mollusks at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

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Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Blog author: Pearce, Timothy; Robinson, Sabrina Spiher
Publication date: July 26, 2024

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Molluks, Sabrina Spiher Robinson, Spotlight on Science, Spotlight on Science Mollusks, Tim Pearce

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