Featured Publications
Millimeter-sized smart sensors reveal that a solar refuge protects tree snail Partula hyalina from extirpation
Cindy S. Bick, Inhee Lee, Trevor Coote, Amanda E. Haponski, David Blaauw & Diarmaid Ó Foighil
Abstract - Pacific Island land snails are highly endangered due in part to misguided biological control programs employing the alien predator Euglandina rosea. Its victims include the fabled Society Island partulid tree snail fauna, but a few members have avoided extirpation in the wild, including the distinctly white-shelled Partula hyalina. High albedo shell coloration can facilitate land...
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Unraveling Cryptic Morphological Diversity in a Marine Snail Species Complex Using Nuclear Genomic Data
Peter Cerda
How does one delimit individuals with a morphology that is intermediate between that of two species? Do these individuals belong to one or the other species or are they hybrids? In their paper, Unraveling Cryptic Morphological Diversity in a Marine Snail Species Complex Using Nuclear Genomic Data, Mollusk Division PhD student Peter Cerda and coauthors used analyses of patterns of genetic...
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Phylogenomic analyses confirm a novel invasive North American Corbicula (Bivalvia: Cyrenidae) lineage
Amanda Haponski and Diarmaid Ó Foighil
How many lineages of the freshwater clam Corbicula have colonized North America? Recently a conchologically distinct form that possibly represents an additional lineage was discovered in the Illinois River. In their paper, Phylogenomic analyses confirm a novel invasive North American Corbicula (Bivalvia: Cyrenidae) lineage, former Mollusk Division postdoc, Amanda Haponski, and Mollusk Division Curator, Diarmaid Ó Foighil, used sequence data from thousands of nuclear...
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Deconstructing an infamous extinction crisis: Survival of Partula species on Moorea and Tahiti
Amanda Haponski, Taehwan Lee, and Diarmaid Ó Foighil
How much of the genetic diversity of partulid snails has survived the impacts of the introduction of Euglandina rosea? In their paper on patterns of nuclear genetic variation of Partula from Moorea and Tahiti, Deconstructing an infamous extinction crisis: Survival of Partula species on Moorea and Tahiti, former Mollusk Division postdoc, Amanda Haponski, Mollusk Division Collection Manager, Taehwan Lee, and Mollusk Division Curator, Diarmaid Ó Foighil, reveal that...
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Effects of predator-prey interactions on predator traits: Differentiation of diets and venoms of a marine snail
David Weese and Tom Duda
How do genes that affect traits associated with resource utilization evolve in response to changes or differences in the breadth and composition of these resources? In their paper, Effects of predator-prey interactions on predator traits: Differentiation of diets and venoms of a marine snail, former Mollusk Division postdoc, David Weese, and Mollusk Division Curator, Tom Duda, show that the venom of Conus miliaris at Easter Island, which preys on a broader assortment of polychaetes species at Easter Island than at other...
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