Dear John,

It is known that turban snails and abalones would change shell colors
if you feed them different group of seaweeds. Green alga make
their shells green, and red ones brown or something like that.

In my personal experience with Turbo marmoratus, it changed
shell colors just as expected when I fed some juveniles different
seaweeds. Perhaps some of the shell colors came from the
seaweed foods that contained different kinds of pigments and/or
sources to form shell colors.  This is evident in herbivorous snails
but not so sure about others.

Donacids often changed hues and strength of color expression,
but kept the same sort of colors under laboratory culture conditions:
leaving clear divisions between before and after laboratory culture.

It was found that some shells changed (often stopped showing)
specific colors after radical changes in environmental parameters,
under culture conditions.

Some pectinids that are commercially cultured show very rare
white colorless shells: this might represent mutation.

Tom has posted just before me!

Masashi Yamaguchi
Univ. of the Ryukyus

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