What do malacologists do on their days off?

Malacology- the study of mollusks (clams, squid, snails, etc.)

An important part of being a scientist, is sharing your research with colleagues.  Last week, a few of us from our nudibranch lab took a break from lab and computer work to attend the Annual Meeting of the Western Society of Malacologists in San Diego.  The meeting consisted of three days of oral presentations and a poster session all based on mollusk-related research.  Some talks were about the history of the use of shelled mollusks for food, tools, and adornment. Other talks were about the change in the composition of mollusk species in certain areas over time, which can be heavily influenced by human settlement.  The whole second day of talks was devoted to sea slugs.  Both my labmate Carissa and I presented talks on our graduate research on nudibranchs and our advisor, Terry, presented on some new species of sea slugs (genus Philine).

A couple of the days (only one for me!), a bunch of us slugsters got up extra early (5AM!) to head out to the tidepools to see what kind of nudibranchs we could find.  We found several species of nudibranchs, including a few that I’ve never seen up here in the Bay Area.  Here are some of the species we encountered:

That’s all for now.  Till next time!

Vanessa Knutson

Graduate Student, IZG Dept

Project Lab Coordinator