This Wednesday, March 28^th I depart from SFO to join Dr. Bob Drewes’ expedition to the island nation of Sao Tome and Principe. The islands are in the Gulf of Guinea situated on the west coast of Africa and lie directly on the equator (Figure below). The objectives of this trip are to collect limpets, forams, and an elusive shrew. As far as I am aware, no limpets have ever been recorded from these islands. The forams (foraminifera – a single celled eukaryote with a calcareous test (shell)) are being collected for a phylogenomics project with Dr. Jere Lipps. The shrew is being collected for a biogeography project with UCLA undergraduate student Eden Maloney and Dr. Drewes.