Marcus,

Actually, there is exactly such a list and an institution for North America.
The American Fisheries Society Special Publication No. 26 is "Common and
Scientific Names of Aquatic Invertebrates from the United States and
Canada," 1998.  The publication includes a systematic list of families by
class and order, an alphabetical list by class (for each of the seven
mollusk classes), and family listings within each order with individual
species listed, scientific name and common name (if given).  This has been
published on a CD and if you click on the scientific name of a species you
are forwarded to the annotations where details of when the species was
named, any name changes, etc. are given.  It is really quite an effort and
supposedly can be updated as needed given its electronic format (although I
do not know of any more recent updates, the 1998 version is the second
edition).   It can probably be purchased from the American Malacological
Union, but certainly from:

The American Fisheries Society
5410 Grosvenor Lane, Suite 110
Bethesda, Maryland  20814
USA

This is an excellent reference and very easy to use.  The cover page has a
color illustration of each of the seven mollusk classes and you just have to
click on the image you are interested in and you are taken to the section
that has that class.  There are limited color illustrations (16 pages,
multiple entries on each page) and if a species is illustrated the word
"photo" will appear after its name.  This publication does not give
precedence to common names over scientific names, but does provide a listing
of both.

Tom Eichhorst from New Mexico, USA
[log in to unmask]

PS  And thanks to Dan Johnson for an new online reference to unionids.

-----Original Message-----
From: Conchologists List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Marcus Coltro
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 8:53 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Houston Bivalves and Common names


Very nice work and photos! Fresh water bivalves from this area are very
nice, and some are difficult
to identify. We use these publications

Johnson, R.I. & Baker, H.B., 1973, The Types of Unionacea in the Academy of
Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia
Howells, R.G.; Neck, R.W. & Murray, H.D., 1996, Freshwater Mussels of Texas
Parmalee, P.W. & Bogan, A.E., 1998, The Freshwater Mussels of Tennessee

And some net sources as
http://128.146.250.235/bivalves/  Dr. George Watters' page
http://members.aol.com/mkohl1/FWshells.html Martin Kohl's page
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~ksc/MusselGenera.html Kevin Cumming's page also
http://clade.acnatsci.org/mussel/

The only thing that puzzles me is the usage of common names - every single
shell has it? I agree
that beginners have hard time learning Latin names, but when it comes to a
point where such work is
done I see no reason to use them, or at least not highlighted before the
scientific names.

It raises a question: who gives these names to every single shell, even to
species that only one
specimen is known. Is there a place where these names are registered? Anyone
knows that?

Marcus

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