Dear Conchlers,

David Campbell gave a good rationale for the conference but may have left
some of you hungering for more. Well, I was not able to attend the
conference even though it was held only three blocks away from my office and
I was in town. That's life in state government. Furthermore, Murphy's Law
hit in the form of a flulike illness, which kept me at home one day and made
me think twice about attending even the evening socials. So I missed out on
seeing some malacologists for whom I have great respect.

Now, as to what actually happened during the conference, the announcement
says that it was the second half of a 'General Water Quality Conference'
that lasted four days (March 15-18); each day had its own theme. On Day 1,
'Threats' to molluscan habitats in rivers and the Gulf of Mexico, with talks
by Tom Watters, Elizabeth Nichols, Don Cherry, Anne Hoos, Nancy Rabelais,
Byron Freeman, Chuck Bohack, and Carl Kurtz. Day 2, 'Assessments', consisted
largely of status reports on freshwater animals in the southeastern United
States, including fishes and crayfishes as well as snails and mussels (David
Braun, Ryan Smith, Wendy Smith, Melvin Warren, Chris Skelton, Richard Neves,
Kenneth Brown, Chuck Bach, Steve Ahlstedt, Larry Murdock). On Day 3, the
FMCS Gastropod Workshop began, starting with the basics of freshwater
gastropod classification and proceeding with a review of each family (Ellen
Strong, Paul Johnson, Jeffrey Sides, Stephanie Clark, Russ Minton, John
Burch, Amy Wethington, Katherine Perez, Andrea Walther). Day 4, 'Gastropod
Identification, Biology, and Conservation', rounded the week up with
discussions of introduced species, landsnails, molecular phylogenetics,
shell morphometry, ecology, conservation and amelioration (David Robinson,
Katherine Perez, Chuck Lydeard, Jeffery Sides, Robert Dillon, Steve
Ahlstedt, Sabrina Bovak, Paul Johnson, Ken Brown). At least on paper, a
stimulating and well organized conference with many of the leading names in
their fields -- I wish I could have been there.

Thanks for leading off the report, David.

Cheers,
Andy

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama

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