When looking in the Museum for a shell to illustrate the entry above, I found a slightly damaged White Ball Lamellaria, Lamellaria leucosphaera Schwengel, 1942 (photo). The species was described in 1942 by Jeanne E. Schwengel, in the journal The Nautilus (currently published by the Museum). Curiously enough, the holotype, or specimen observed and illustrated by Schwengel, deposited at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadephia, was collected at the bay end of Redfish Pass, the deep pass between Captiva and North Captiva islands, not too far from the Museum (the species has since been found in other parts of Florida and the western Atlantic). Although there was no illustration of the living animal in Schwengel’s paper, she described it as “…grayish, semi-transparent…, peppered with small black dots… and…white “sugar grains…”. And, as with other lamellarias (see above), the animal completely envelops the shell in this unusual species. (Photos by James F. Kelly, scale units are millimeters.) Read more about local mollusks in our Southwest Florida Shell Guide.