YPM 7797.GP: Conus leopardus

YPM 7797.GP Conus (Lithoconus) leopardus Roding, 1798: Pacific Ocean. Hawaii. Hawaiian Islands. U.S. Exploring Expedition 1838-1842. 19 Sep 1840 - 05 Apr 1841. Determined by: Morris, P.A.

TAXONOMY
Animalia (Kingdom)
Mollusca (Phylum) — bilaterally symmetrical, soft & segmented body, mantle and shell
Gastropoda (Class) — contains snails and slugs
Caenogastropoda (Subclass)
Neogastropoda (Order)
Conidae (Family) — contains predatory sea snails
Conus (Genus)


FORM
Each of these C. leopardus shells weigh at least a pound. C. leopardus falls into the broadly conical category of cone snail shell shape diversity. The shell typically has a uniform brown spotted pattern, though these specimens have been beach-worn and the colors have faded. Though the shell seems smooth and harmless, inside, there are harpoons—teeth-shaped radula—that hold venom. In attack, the cone snail extends its proboscis and releases a harpoon to inject venom into its target. Venom is unique to each species of cone snail, but they are generally neurotoxic and will cause paralysis if stung.

By H. Zell - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13292222

RANGE
C. leopardus inhabits waters of the Indo-Pacific, ranging from Hawaii to East Africa. They are typically found in sandy, shallow bay areas or reef flats. This habitat is called the marine neritic zone, or the area above the continental shelf drop-off and receives sunlight—it has the greatest density and diversity of marine life.

Oceanic divisions. The neritic zone includes the area leading up to the continental shelf drop-off.
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

HISTORY
YPM 7797.GP was collected on the 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition, a world-wide expedition sponsored by Congress to explore the ocean's frontier. Six ships, led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) sailed 87,000 miles from Cape Horn in Chile, to the Philippines and down to Antarctica. Nine civilian scientists—including Yale geologist James Dwight Dana—traveled on the expedition to collect and describe thousands of new natural history specimens, many of which became the foundation of the Smithsonian's collections.

The expedition of civilian and naval personnel marked the first "peacetime scientific endeavor" in American history, but by no means was science the sole focus of the expedition. Merchants in New England were interested in sealing and whaling grounds of the Pacific. Plotting out future harbors, gaining impressions of people in other lands, and other naval surveying activities were major motivations for this expedition. Glancing at the original label and ledger for this specimen hints at this colonial history.

Both the label and the ledger lists 'Sandwich Islands' as the location for the specimen. At the time, Hawaii was known as the Sandwich Islands, named by Captain James Cook after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, one of his sponsors. 

In addition to being in the center of American whaling in the Pacific, Hawaii held a lot of potential as a base for ships traveling across the ocean. The islands were heavily surveyed by the Navy, including Pearl River near Honolulu. Wilkes predicted that the river would be the "best and most capacious harbor in the Pacific" (Nathaniel Philbrick, Seas of Glory). Today it's known as Pearl Harbor. The published volumes of reports and atlases from the U.S. Exploring Expedition helped the U.S. not only emerge into the realm of international science, but also as a naval power in the world.

TODAY

C. leopardus and other cone snails have received attention recently in medicine. Conotoxins—the toxins inside cone snail venom—are a diverse group of peptides that have a high degree of specificity in targeting certain parts of neural transmission. If the conotoxins can be isolated and characterized, they can be incorporated into drugs with better specificity. Some of the uses of conotoxins so far have been as diagnostic tools in characterizing neural pathways and as therapeutic agents in medicine. More research on conotoxins is being developed to characterize novel peptides for drug potential. 

The stories that specimens hold over centuries is a lot like the film The Red Violin, said Casey Dunn, curator of the invertebrate zoology division (but better, because I didn't stop halfway through). Contextualizing the specimen with multiple stories—the colonial, the biological, the medicinal, and more—helps us ground our understanding of specimens are collected for, and poses other questions for future of collecting. How can we diverge from the colonial history of collecting? In what ways can we ensure an equal exchange of specimens, or value? Where are the benefits of the collected specimen distributed? The specimens will live many more lives through the ways we continue to utilize them from the collections, and hopefully exchange them too.