Your opinion ... my opinion ...
on some molluscs
Here you can find a few infos on malacological problems or comments worth publishing but
at the moment not given to any publisher due to lack of time for preparing manuscripts.
Therefore you have to take these infos as some sort of thoughts for a discussion. But,
please, you are not allowed to publish any of the facts or pictures given on this webpage
without having contacted the author (Dr. Vollrath
Wiese, Haus der Natur - Cismar)
1. Strombus indecoratus in "A Conchological Iconography"
When looking through the plates of the otherwise beautiful Iconography there is
unfortunately a bad misunderstanding about Strombus (Tricornis) indecoratus
Lorenz & Wiese 1990
The so-called "indecoratus"-specimen in the iconography is a nice
specimen of Str. tricornis and obviously the authors of pictures as well as text
have never seen a real Str. indecoratus probably because of its scarcity. I think
that a coloured picture of a real indecoratus has never been published, therefore
it is given here (75 pixel per inch, specimen 79,7 mm in height) although up to now not of
good quality (a better one is given here in the near future).
Up to better knowledge I would propose to take Str. indecoratus as a full
species, when more specimens have come to light it may probably be reduced to an
ecological variant or subspecies or even a hybrid form.
holotype of Str. indecoratus (look at the sutures of the last whorls, sutures
are not knobby) coll. HNC 24004
2. Comments on a "new" Turrid species from Kerguelen or "who knows coldwater mollusca?"
The article which is herewith commented was written in issue No. 23 of "World Shells". I would have written some words in "World Shells" itself but the journal ended with vol.23.
In the issue 23 of "World Shells", pp. 42-44, L. Bozzetti described a beautiful and comparatively large turrid (60,6 mm) from Kerguelen islands in the southern Indian Ocean as new genus and new species on the basis of one specimen. Unfortunately the good quality photograph of the holotype published with the description shows a beautiful but otherwise typical specimen of a species belonging to the well-known coldwater genus Aforia Dall 1889 (syn. Irenosyrinx Dall 1908). So there is no doubt that the genus Danilacarina Bozzetti 1997 is a junior synonym of Aforia Dall 1889. But even the species is known. After a close inspection of the type specimen of "Danilicarina elenae" it can be decided to be conspecific with Aforia multispiralis DELL 1990.
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So the widely distributed coldwater genus Aforia
has another species with a very large distribution. Aforia multispiralis was up
to now known from Antarctic Peninsula, Bransfield Strait, the South Shetlands and the
South Orkneys (see original description, Dell 1990). With the new finding its distribution
also includes the Kerguelen vicinity. The holotype of "Danilicarina elenae BOZZETTI" was transferred to the documentation collection of "Haus der Natur - Cismar" by its owner, Mr. Henrikas Danila of Klaipeda, Lithuania (Many thanks to my friend Henrikas for this valuable donation).
Photo: A 96 mm Aforia multispiralis from antarctic waters (75 pixel per inch) There are many well established specialists for coldwater molluscs in the world (for example at least specialists living in New Zealand, Russia and Germany, some of them having published a lot of important papers on antarctic or subantarctic molluscs). Please, contact them when you are working with molluscs of their research areas. |
written by Dr. Vollrath Wiese, Haus der Natur - Cismar
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