Join us for an NASC Colloquium on  "Shells and Stories: Insights from Behind the Scenes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County" presented by Jann E Vendetti, Ph.D., associate curator of malacology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 

Mollusk specimens make up one of the largest components of many natural history museums’ collections. Their diversity, fossil record, form, and distribution make them excellent candidates for scientific inquiry by systematics, evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, and others. 

In this talk, Vendetti will present snails and other mollusks as uniquely wonderful outcomes of evolution, harbingers of climate change, world travelers, examples of undetected speciation, and more. Vendetti will also highlight the role of a natural history museum to care for these collections and engage the public in documenting biodiversity, and the important consequences of these records for science and society.

Reception to follow in the Ho Science lower atrium.