March 2013

The crown conch is the Jekyll and Hyde of coastal ecosystems. Dr. Randall Hughes clarifies why the predatory snail might be a friend or foe to the salt marsh.

Lab technician Ryan Coker (who normally works in salt marshes) was drafted into oyster duty, on which he encountered deep mud and larger animals than you’d find on an oyster reef.

To get a handle on the oyster mortality problem south of St. Augustine, Hanna Garland staged “cage matches” between the oyster-eating crown conch and one of its predators, the thinstripe hermit crab.

Dr. David Kimbro is starting to see a pattern across Florida oyster reefs affected by loss of freshwater input. Is the prevalence of oyster eating snails the cause or merely a symptom of oyster reef decline?

As the David Kimbro lab deploys a spat (young oyster) tile experiment in Apalachicola Bay to monitor the health of its beleaguered reefs, Dr. Randall Hughes explains how these experiments have become a key tool in her and David’s oyster research.