During my first semester at Yale, I conducted independent research on gastropod predation of bivalves at the Yale Peabody Museum as a part of my first-year seminar: Collections of the Peabody. I presented my findings to classmates and Yale Peabody staff, and I wrote a final paper reporting my findings (attached left).

ABSTRACT: Drilling gastropods leave distinguishable holes in their bivalve prey allowing drill attempts to be traced through the fossil record and into the modern day. Examining drill holes on bivalves gives insight into trends in drilling predation between gastropods and bivalves over time and trends in predator-prey relationships broadly. In this study, I investigated whether the size of gastropod predators and the size of bivalve prey influenced prey selection. I hypothesized a linear directly proportional relationship between drill hole size and bivalve size. I also aimed to discover a relationship between the location of gastropod drilling on bivalves and the location of the soft organs in bivalves. I hypothesized that gastropod predators would drill at the center of bivalves to access the soft organs. I evaluated the relationship between bivalve and gastropod size by measuring drilled fossil and modern valves at their longest and widest points and compared those measurements to the diameter of their drill holes. I evaluated hole location by categorizing drill holes into four quadrant locations on modern and fossilized valves. Drill holes in bivalves were primarily located in the half of valves closest to the hinge disputing my hypothesis. However, gastropods appear to maximize the efficiency of drilling predation by drilling in the lower two quadrants where soft organs occupy the most space. There was a logarithmic relationship between drill hole diameter and the length and width of bivalves showing that larger gastropods prey on larger bivalves and smaller gastropods prey on smaller bivalves despite the predator-prey size ratio between gastropods and bivalves increasing as prey size decreases. This trend reflects a larger trend in predator-prey relationships where larger predators prey on larger and smaller prey.

I currently work as a research assistant for the Yale Peabody Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Paleontology. I am working to increase the amount of publicly accessible data on the Invertebrate Paleontology Collection. Currently, I am working to image a specimen from every genus of trilobite held in the collection to make information on the collection’s trilobite specimens more accessible for research and further studies.