Shell museum to hold next lecture
The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum on Sanibel is continuing with its annual lecture series, which is offered virtually via Zoom and free of charge. The next lecture in the series will be:
– July 13 at 5:30 p.m.: “Hawaiian Land Snails: Lessons in Conservation, Curation, and Research” with Dr. Norine Yeung, malacology curator for the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii
The Hawaiian Islands support a spectacular biodiversity of land snails with at least 759 species with distinctive evolutionary, ecological and cultural legacies that play an important role in understanding land snail evolution and geographical distribution. Hawaiian land snails’ extraordinary endemicity (species present only on the islands) of higher than 99% is rivaled only by the scale of local extinctions.
During the past 15 years major steps in study and research have helped bridge knowledge gaps hampering conservation. A change in public perception about snails is also necessary for their survival. Yeung will present an overview of what remains and suggestions for what is needed to develop effective conservation strategies for the future of land snails in Hawaii.
Yeung has been malacology curator at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum since 2015. She is also a Natural Area Reserves commissioner for the Department of Land and Natural Resources in Honolulu. Yeung has been involved with Hawaiian land snail conservation, research and publication for over a decade. She earned her Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Shell museum Executive Director Sam Ankerson will provide the introduction for the lecture, along with an update on the museum post-Hurricane Ian.
Advance registration is required.
For more information or to register, visit https://www.shellmuseum.org/online-lectures.
The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum is at 3075 Sanibel-Captiva Road, Sanibel.