Having the "bug" to make a sailor's valentine, I ordered the small kit,
complete with shells.  I had never collected emerald nerites and was amazed
at the color variations.  It's almost sidetracked my intent to make the
sailor's valentines.  It's one of those "I'll get around to it later" things
now.  They are interesting!  I have a dumb question....where do they come
from?

Carol
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew K. Rindsberg <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, August 30, 1999 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: Emerald Nerite


>Tom Eichhorst wrote,
>"The nerites are a tough group because they are so common as to be
>overlooked, many are extremely variable in color and pattern, and there is
>surely a large proportion that have been named a few different times."
>
>Some species are so common that naturalists fail to collect them at all,
>thinking they can always do so later. That is why specimens of the
>Passenger Pigeon are so rare although they once numbered in the billions.
>Now, most researchers (professional or amateur) are careful to collect the
>common shells as well as the rarities.
>
>You can do things with common shells that you would not be able to do with
>rare ones. For instance, they can be sampled destructively for chemical and
>other tests, without worrying about their rarity. Their ecology can be
>studied relatively easily, and can be tracked over a period of time. And
>their variations can be studied intensively, yet at low cost. With rare
>shells, you cannot expect to find them on every visit to a stretch of beach
>or marsh, but oysters and nerites are reliable. We will never know as much
>about Thatcheria mirabilis as we do about the common oyster Crassostrea
>virginica, but it may be that there are more specimens of Thatcheria in
>worldwide collections than of Crassostrea. Not many people would trade for
>Crassostrea.
>
>As Gary Rosenberg pointed out recently, a researcher who needed common
>local oysters that were collected long ago had difficulty in finding enough
>specimens for testing. Of course, storage has always been a problem for
>museums, otherwise Gary could be storing buckets of oyster shells for the
>future as you read this. But this is not such a problem with nerites, which
>are small. Someone ought to do it.
>
>Andrew K. Rindsberg
>Geological Survey of Alabama
>"An Oyster in Every Collection"