National Shell Museum Offers Free Online Lecture on Shellfish Ecology

provided to The Santiva Chronicle

The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium concludes its summer-fall online lecture series with Picking Up the Pieces: Tracking Elusive Predators on Mollusks on Wednesday, October 14, at 5:30 pm.

The online lecture, led by Matthew Ajemian, Ph.D., will be offered live via Zoom and is free for registrants.

The elusive nature of large, shell-crushing predators (such as rays and sea turtles) makes it challenging to understand their ecological role in seabed communities, including how they interact with molluscan shellfish.

This talk covers how Dr. Ajemian’s team uses innovative methods such as shell fragmentation, eDNA, and acoustics to detect and study predator-prey interactions (a “who crushed who”?) within various underwater habitats and conditions. Attendees will experience how Ajemian’s team uses specialized tags to track the foraging behavior of a large predator, the whitespotted eagle ray, in Bermuda and Florida. The talk closes with a discussion of the relevance of these findings to marine ecosystem ecology and shellfish restoration projects in Florida and beyond.

Dr. Ajemian is an Associate Research Professor at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), where he leads the Fisheries Ecology and Conservation program at FAU Harbor Branch. He has published over 80 articles and has received competitive early-career awards from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation, as well as applied grants from NOAA Fisheries, the Department of Defense, and Florida Sea Grant.

Although free, pre-registration is required. Please click here to register and to watch recordings of previous lectures. This series is supported by the Sam and Francis Bailey Clean Water Education Center, Leslie Fleischner, and Joan and Don Sherman.

About the Museum: The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium is a natural history museum and aquarium, and the only museum in the United States devoted primarily to shells and mollusks. Its mission is to educate and inspire an understanding of mollusks, their shells, and their habitats using exceptional experiences, collections, and science. Permanent exhibitions on view include the Great Hall of Shells, which displays highlights of the Museum’s collection of more than 600,000 shells, as well as the Living Gallery of Aquariums and over 60 species of marine life. For more information, please visit ShellMuseum.org or call (239) 395-2233.