> As best I can tell the species was unknown in the Atlantic Ocean until 1981,
> when Pierre Bernard reported two specimens collected by a Scuba diver in
> Gabon, west Africa (Bernard, 1981).

Could Linatella clandestina (on shell characters I can't see how this
is congeneric with Cymatium or Gelagna) have a brief free
lecithotrophic veliger stage? It may appear to have nonplanktotrophic
development, but has this species in particular been observed to hatch
and crawl away? If it has a free veliger, even for only a few days, it
could be picked-up by ships taking on ballast water. Even if the larva
has settled out, a craw;linf microsnail could still be flushed out
when the ballast water is dumped, say in Florida.

--
Regards
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin, New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Mollusc, Toyota & VW van nut

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