Comparing non‐staining methods with Mutvei's solution to visualize growth increments in short‐lived intertidal marine gastropod shells

Abstract Mutvei's solution is a widely utilized standard staining method for revealing growth increments in biogenic carbonates; however, it is a slightly toxic, destructive approach with varying success across species groups. Therefore, there has been growing interest in finding non‐toxic, less destructive, and straightforward alternative techniques for studying growth structures, primarily focusing on long‐lived shells. This research focuses on an intertidal short‐lived marine gastropod— Conomurex luhuanus , collected from the Great Barrier Reef and a nearby archaeological site. A comparative analysis of common and cost‐effective tools used for growth increment visualization—including transmitted‐light microscopy, reflected‐light microscopy, cathodoluminescence, Raman spectroscopy, and acetate peel against Mutvei's solution—was undertaken to determine the most effective method to visualize daily growth increments in C. luhuanus . Overall, our results suggested that the relative patterns of measuring growth increments using all techniques are broadly consistent ( r = 0.4–0.7, p < 0.05) in the absence of slowed or halted growth. However, transmitted‐light microscopy (TML) was the only method that revealed more growth increments in an area where growth lines were too thin to be detected using other techniques, making it impossible to distinguish the daily growth increments using those techniques. Transmitted‐light microscopy, without staining or thin‐sectioning, was an effective and time‐efficient technique for visualizing daily growth increments in C. luhuanus . We suggest that TML can be considered as a preliminary step to investigate growth increments in other species before applying established approaches, such as Mutvei's solution.