Emilio, are they really clines?  Neat! I thought that the various forms all
lived sort of combined in an area, with plenty of normal ones mixed in.
Sort of like the melanistic and rostrate ones around Noumea, New Cal. Tell
more.  Where do they start and stop?  I can vouch for the all white ones
being the rarest, from prices alone! I wonder about those unspotted pale
pink ones Dawn was mentioning?
 
By the way, Dawn,  when I checked the facts instead of relying on my
apparently leaky memory, I only found two specimens of melanistic cyps
"from" Tryon Island. Must have been bad data. All the rest so far were from
the "Capricorn group" or "Keppel Islands" as you said. I will check more
today in the collection of a friend who buys a lot of the melanistic
cowries and odd forms. Burgess says that only arabica, erosa, felina,
errones and gracilis are known to him from that area in the "more-or-less
melanotic or rostrate" form. And I have not seen any really dark ones.
 
Lynn Scheu
[log in to unmask]
Louisville, KY, Home of the best Conch-L gathering ever! Tuesday evening,
June 29! There'll be food! And a LOT of us!
 
 
>Lynn Scheu wrote:
>
>> Also, are the albinistic Cypraea cribraria you mentioned the variety called
>> Cypraea cribraria melwardi? I've seen some completely white specimens of
>> those. If I hadn't seen others collected in the same area with vestiges of
>> cribraria markings on them, I'd hardly believe they were C. cribraria.  And
>> do they come from elsewhere besides Tryon Island?  Interesting. And where
>> else  (or where) are the Queensland melanistics you mention from?
>
>Hello!
>
>Hi Lynn and all,
>
>There are other populations of cribraria that exhibit albinistic clines ie
from
>
>full color/spotted to all white, the Solomons population. From what I have
>been told the intermediate forms (partly spotted) of melwardi are the most
>common with white being the hardest to find.
>--
>
>Later,
>
>Emilio Jorge Power
>
>Please visit;
>"The Liguus Home Page"
>http://pw1.netcom.com/~ejpower/lighompage.html
>West Melbourne, Florida  USA
>
>