The Coffee melampus shell is small and roundish. The one I photographed is brown in color with horizontal stripes. The hermit crab which was carrying the shell, was hidden down under the large crown conch. It’s one of those small shells which would be easy to overlook while beach-combing.
Hermit in a coffee melampus shell
The living crown conchs seemed to meet up just greet each other, so I began taking video with my phone. As I watched another shell began to move out from under the larger conch. A striped hermit crab was carrying it as he crawled across the top of the conch. I took a photo to bring home where I could study the shell better and discover what it is called.
As I flipped through my seashell ID book, nothing jumped out at me. There were no small roundish brown shells. Then as I was trying to identify another tiny shell I’d found days later, I came across the picture of the Melampus snail. It looked to be the same shape, even if the shells in my book were not brown.
Two living crown conch snails say “hello” and a hermit crab emerges in a Coffee Melampus shell.
At the Matthews-Bailey Shell Museum site they say that this shell belongs to a land snail – in the family Ellobiidae. However, my seashell book lists this as a sea snail in the family Marginellidae saying that the two families are related.
Hermit crabs can exist on both dry land and underwater, but can’t stay out on dry land long. They need the saltwater to survive. He definitely could have found this snail shell on dry land and brought it into the sea.
Whenever I have found a longish little brown shell out in the backwater shallows, I have assumed it was a baby horse conch. After studying my “Florida’s Living Beaches” book I see that I must have been wrong in some cases. I will go back through my blog posts to see if I have mis-named it.
At first glance the shape of the brown shell is right. Horse conchs are long shells with a pointy spire – the top of the shell that is twirled. But the baby horse conch tends to be light in color. They are usually a uniform light yellow color. But the brown shell below is not a juvenile horse conch. It is most likely a Chestnut latirus (Leucozonia nassa). It only grows to a little over 2 inches in length whereas the horse conch can grow to be an impressive 2 feet long! Because I do find many horse conchs, in this area, I assumed it was a baby.
Juvenile Horse Conch, or Not?
Chestnut latirus
The answer is no for the brown shell, but the shell I am holding in the photo below is a juvenile horse conch. Although it is partially covered in the black periostracum commonly found on shells in the wild, you can see the light yellow color of the shell. It is also more elongated with a longer siphon canal (opening). The difference is easy to see when comparing the photo above and below (which were taken months apart).
The shells I come across are usually not in the greatest of shape. Besides being covering in black stuff, mud, algae, and barnacles, they are often not fully intact. Both shells have missing pieces.
Baby horse conch shell
Here’s the other problem I have when it comes to identifying seashells out in the wild. I can’t bring them home because hermit crabs usually have taken up residence. The sun is incredibly bright and I snap a few photos to look at later and hope I got some good shots. (I never take enough photos!) So I can’t study them except to look at my few pictures.
Also, because the original snail is no longer in the shell, the shell can be found far from the snails usual habitat. The Chestnut latirus lives on reefs, and the horse conch likes sand. Yet I find them living together as hermit crabs in a sandy area! See my dilemma?
More Little Shells to Identify
I’m very sure this little hermit house is a juvenile Crown conch. There are no spikes on it yet, but it has the tell-tale stripes beginning to form as you can see in my second photo below.
Juvenile crown conch with hermit crab inside
Small Crown Conch with periwinkles
The shell below is a faded Crown Conch which was found inland, so no hermit inside. The spikes are beginning to form even though it’s only about an inch in size.
Juvenile crown conch shell, with spikes just beginning to grow
Of the two shells below, I believe the brown one is the Eastern Mudsnail (Ilyanassa obsoleta), but the other one baffles me. The trouble with small shells is you don’t know if you are looking at a full grown one or a baby that will turn into something else (or would have, if it had lived).
The little white shell I am holding in the photo below was a recent find. A tiny hermit crab lives inside but I wanted a photo to try to identify the type of shell.
I believe it is a Bruised nassas, (Nassarius vibex)or type of mud snail. (You can see more photos here.) Those bumpy ribs make the shell unique looking, but the nassas is really very common. The mud snails stay small and often measure an inch or less. I suppose they are the perfect choice for a baby hermit crab to reside.
Below I am holding a Florida cerith shell with a tiny hermit crab peeking out. This shell stays small at a max of 1.5 inches. It’s perfect as a home for tiny crabs. The cerith can be found all around the coastline of Florida.
Below is a different Cerith found in another location at another time.
Where to Find These Small Marine Snail Shells
Every shell pictured on this page (except the faded crown next to the measuring tape) was found while boating out to islands along the Indian River. The faded crown was found while walking at Smyrna Dunes Park while the building of the new boardwalk dug up some buried shells. These hermit crabs need water, so any inland shells won’t contain them.
The snails that build these shells live in shallow, sandy, grasses areas, and sometimes near mangrove islands.
Of all these shells only two would have grown to be big. The Crown Conch and Horse Conch are just babies when something ate the snail leaving the shell empty for a hermit to move in.
You will probably never see shells like this along the tourist beaches. Read my page about the typical shells you might collect when visiting the ocean beaches.
I don’t live on Sanibel Island and I haven’t even visited the Island in Florida for almost 20 years, but fortunately I know of a great blogger who lives there and shares her shelling knowledge with the world.
Recently she posted some photos of four small, similar-looking seashells that she had collected from the beach and without a keen eye, you may think they were all the same.
Pam does a nice job of pointing out the differences between the Mauve-mouth drill, Pitted Murex, Ribbed Cantharus, and the Gulf Oyster Drill. Go see!
