Mollusk-mania

We saw a few batches of these apple snail eggs just above the water line on wetland plants at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. The individual eggs were maybe 1/4" in diameter and whole bunch was about 1-1/2" long. In life, they had a slight pinkish tinge although that doesn't show in these overexposed images. I might assume these are the native Florida applesnail (P. paludosa) but one other non-native species might occur here (??).

This is the alphabetic starter species for my mollusk collection from Sanibel. If anyone can double-check me on this (and all other IDs), it would be appreciated. This shell is small (9 mm) and very plain so I may have overlooked many of them.

This large rectangular ark was less numerous than the abundant ponderous and transverse arks, but they were fairly regularly encountered on the beaches adjacent to West Gulf Drive and at Bowman's Beach.

If I'm identifying these correctly, this was by far the most abundant small ark shell--the most abundant shell in fact--on most of the beaches we visited. Literally millions of them could be seen in the high tide drift lines at any beach. The process of shelling was often just scanning, sorting, and sifting through masses of these to look for other species. See, for example, this earlier upload of a typical beach scene:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2277245
These typically ranged in size from 3/4" to 1" in length. I'm still working through our collection of ark shells here at home, hoping I might discover one or more additional ark species for our list.

These were very numerous at the water's edge on the Causeway Islands just off of Sanibel. I had identified these as "Pointed venus clams" in the Witherington guide but I'm not sure they are extended enough on the posterior end to be this species.

Stiff pen shells were by far the most abundant large bivalve on the outer beaches. Thousands of them, mainly broken into pieces, were evident...even providing a minor hazard for bare feet at times. Most were seen in the higher high tide drift piles, presumably having been tossed there by the more violent storms. This example was about 10" long, most were in that size range and even a bit larger at times.

After the stormy weather, whelks were much more numerous on Bowman's Beach, including a few dozen live examples that were thrown back into the surf. Here is a fairly fresh (empty) shell from that visit; notice the young barnacles beginning to colonize the shell.

It was really nice to see many hundreds of this attractive little bivalve...perhaps just a nice visual diversion in the masses of faded ark shells along the beach. This is a sample of those we picked up on our first day.

Here's another set of cerith-like snails of which I'm not sure of the identity. They might be ceriths, false ceriths, or--since they came from the Causeway Islands--some recent fossil of yet something else.

I also have a hunch that the upper two are different from the lower two, in which case I can split this observation if needed.

We saw just a few of these small, rumpled, jewelbox-looking bivalves. They don't seem to be spiny jewelboxes and I'm wondering (hoping) if these could be the "Corrugated jewelbox" (Chama congregata). That's something of a WAG.

Despite their commonness, the variation in patterns on these clams was endlessly fascinating. These were abundant on all beaches we visited, sometimes rivaling the arks in abundance. See, http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2277245

Relatively few intact examples of this species were seen on most days (perhaps because the morning shellers picked most of them up), but after the storm on Sept. 27, they were very numerous on Bowman's Beach.

This is one example that I thought might be Elegant dosinia. The yellow tints are due to being photographed in the late evening.

(I'm frustrated by my various references which invariably use relative terms like "thinner", "more compressed", or "more concentric ribs" when distinguishing this species from Dosinia discus. I need more detailed guidance!)

There were just a few intact examples of common egg cockle, although fragments were seen here and there.

The rightmost, smaller, example here is more circular and I'm wondering if it is a different species (L. mortoni or ??).

These were abundant on the trunks of red mangroves and other logs and trees at low tide at J.R. Ding Darling NWR. The set here was photographed along the Calusa Shell Mound Trail where I could lean in and get close enough for photography.

The spire on the first shell looks a bit taller than the others and I'm wondering if Eastern Melampus (M. bidentatus) might occur with these Coffee Melampus in the same habitat.

Found at Blind Pass. At first, I thought the narrow fan shape of this shell might indicated Rough scallop but after further study* I'm quite confused on scallop IDs!

(* This is a set-up for my favorite Mark Twain quote, "Researchers have already cast much darkness on the subject, and if they continue their investigations, we shall soon known nothing at all about it.")

This was the nicest example of an Apple murex we found on the beaches, this one found by my wife Mary Kay at Blind Pass.

iNat and BMSM both use Chicoreus for the genus where some of my other refs have it as Phyllonotus. I'm not losing sleep over the issue.

We found only one or two of these attractive clams. We may have overlooked them among the somewhat more numerous calico clams. The third and fourth images shows a direct comparison of the two, L-I-W on left, Calico on right.

This was a common species on the outer beaches, or at least fragments and broken shells were. The storm of Sept. 26-27 threw countless hundreds of fresh examples onto Bowman's Beach, both living and dead.

Here a live conch struggles to extricate itself from the mass of shell debris tossed onto the beach from an overnight storm. After having its picture taken, it was transported to the surf, about 3 m away. See this observation for more on the event:
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2278355

Another fragile species of which we found only a very few intact examples, even though fragments were common on the beach.

(iNat still (also) has the "Tellina" species in the database, but both BMSM and my Texas encyclopedia refer to this as "Eurytellina" now.)

Augers with an intact aperture were uncommon--this one shows the common pattern of breakage--and I suspect foraging birds are to "blame" for the damage. I have observed such species as Willets, Yellowlegs, and other shorebird species picking away at such shells.

Last but certainly not least among all our identified mollusks was this American carrier shell that Mary Kay found on our last day at the beach. The shell (without attachments) is about 1 in. across (26 mm).