Dear Paul and all
Here is a quatation about Cyp. arabica immanis from the Schilders' Prodrom:
"...the East African immanis...is characterized by its giant size, the step
sides with large blackish spots, the blunt extremities, and the base mostly
suffused with orange and showing chestnut lines emitted from the teeth". As
you can see  from above, there are apparently all the minimal conditions of
the mentioned East African population so as to consider it subspecies:  it
is geographically separated from the other Cyp. arabica populations and
shells of this population differ from these of the other populations by at
least one characteristics, which is constant, prominent and may be found in
the vast majority of individuals of the discussed population.

 Cypraea tigris schilderiana: to my opinion its status is not finally clear.
In the work of R.E. Brock, 1979 "A statistical study of Cypraea tigris in
the Central Pacific" a conclusion was made that the validity of the Hawaiian
subspecies is doubtful. Any  further study in this field is not known to me
and additional information will be very appreciated.
Eduard Heiman
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 6:36 AM
Subject: Re: Cypraea tigris vs. schilderiana


>Some of our Cypraeaologists may disagree with me, and if so I'll be
>interested to hear it, but as far as I know there are no differences in
shell
>or soft parts between "typical" Cypraea tigris and the "form" Cypraea
tigris
>schilderiana.  The only difference is that Cypraea tigris tends to grow
>larger in Hawaii, and it is those large Hawaiian specimens that got tagged
>with the name "schilderiana".  Since size alone is not a valid criterion
for
>taxonomic separation, I personally think the name schilderiana should be
>declared invalid.  And if size is accepted as a criterion, what is the
>cutoff?  Is a 120 mm Cypraea tigris from the Philippines a "schilderiana"?
>If not, then it would seem that geography, rather than any characteristic
of
>the animal is really the deciding factor, and that would be strange indeed!
>While I am on this kick, I feel the same way about the South African
"Cypraea
>arabica immanis".  Why can't we just say that Cypraea arabica grows bigger
in
>South Africa?  Why does it have to have a different name?
>Paul M.
>