Dear Alfonso and others,

the taxonomic changes in the Conidae and Turridae (moving some of the
turrid subfamilies to the Conidae) was done by Taylor, Kantor and Sysoev.
You can read all about it in the following publication:

Taylor, J., Kantor, Y., and Sysoev, A., (1993). Foregut anatomy, feeding
mechanisms, relationships and reclassification of the (Conoidea (=
Toxoglossa) (Gastropoda) Bulletin of the Natural History Museum, London 59,
125-170

To cut a long story short, they reclassified a number (and I stress a
number) of Conoid (meaning Conidae + Turridae + Terebridae) taxa on the
basis of some very detailed anatomy. When I was writing my book on shells
of Sydney, this paper had just come out, so I followed the proposed
changes, and have been following others' reactions to them since. I have
also asked a number of leading scientists as to what they thought of it.
Although everyone I asked agreed that the work was good, most people also
agreed that the proposed changes are not practical without much further
work. The authors did not cover all turrid genera (and you can just about
imagine what a life's work that would be, the turridae being the largest
molluscan family with over 7000 species in many, many genera), so if you
are classifying a collection or writing a faunal work, what to do with the
taxa that were not covered in Taylor et al.? Besides, the taxonomy of the
Turridae is in a big meddle to start off with. Distinctions between genera
are fuzzy and I am being overly optimistic here. Everyone, including
myself, throws Turrids in the too-hard basket. Anyone attempting a revision
of the family would need a lifetime. To the contrary, the Conidae in the
old sense, are an easy group, easily recognised by their shell shape.

It seems that for the time being most authors acknowledge the work by
Taylor, but leave the classification 'as is' pending further study

At least this is my experience

hope this helps

Patty


Dr. Patty Jansen

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