Summer photos 4 and a link

Nucella lapilus, a dogwhelk, on a rock covered in barnacles.

I'm still working through the photos from my late-May collecting trip. This is Nucella lapilus, a carnivorous snail that is very common on the Atlantic coast. This particular one is white, but elsewhere on the coast you can see them in many different colors.

In fact, here's some from New Jersey from a previous year:

Different color morphs of N. lapilus on a rock. There's a white one, several dark ones, and a couple of orange ones. Also note that they are smaller than the guy from further north on the coast. That's a pretty common pattern in ectothermic things (they get larger in colder environments).

I also would be remiss if I didn't tell you to go read the wonderful post from the Collin lab blog about sex ID in Crepidula species: how to ID male and female snails and why it matters.