>Also, I understand common names being different on shells,

Best to avoid these entirely. The scientific names are no more
difficult to learn and are (more) logical.

>but I have recently been confused in finding the same shell in a couple of
>different books but with different scientific names. Is there a list out
>there or something that everyone follows as a standard?

Over time workers revise specific groups, whether a group of related
species, genus, subfamily, family or superfamily. This inevitably
results in some species being transferred from one genus to another;
also some species names may be determined to be synonyms of others
already named. Of course the quality of such works varies hugely,
according to the abilities of the authors, and regrettably a large
number are not worth the paper they are printed on. Objectivity is a
real problem. Errors in identification of species, genus or even
family are not uncommon, and unfortunately the problem of
previously-named species and variations thereof being bestowed new
names is rife. Some authors insist on using subspecies, though an
increasing number of the more-advanced workers do not use them.
Knowing what to go along with and what not to is the trick... and
only experience (and judgement... the two are not the same) can allow
one to do this.

How about finding the same species under TWO names in one work? I can
think of one American & one New Zealand author who did this when
describing new species of fossil shells... Ladd & Powell. In Ladd's
case I can think of one species named in two different families in
the one work... at least one of the new names he gave it was placed
in the correct family, if the wrong genus, but the VALID name in the
work is the one placed in the wrong family...

>Right now the main
>two books that I am using are A Collector's Guide to Seashells of the World
>by Jerome M. Eisenberg and Compendium of Seashells by R. Tucker Abbott and
>S. Peter Dance. The book Florida's Living Beaches by Blair and Dawn
>Witherington has been a help to me also except this is where some of the
>name changes are coming from.

Eisenberg's book is full of errors, especially generic placements,
but also some species are mididentified. It illustrates a lot of
species, but the illustrations are not crisp. "Compendium", a
must-have, is perhaps the single most important worldwide
identification guide, but again is full of errors of all kinds,
including transposed or reversed images and images that just don't
belong there (one illustration is of an Ancilla, but neither the
caption nor the position in the book is for an olivid). For the
IndoPacific Okutani's 2000 work "Marine Mollusks in Japan" is an
expensive but indispensible item, which illustrates many small and
"obscure" species; again it has numerous errors (eg bad typos, and it
shares with Abbott's vital 1974 edition of "American Seashells", for
instance, a lack of understanding of the genera of the bivalve family
Philobryidae, brought to my attention during correspondence with
another listee), in addition to unfortunately not being published in
separate Japanese & English editions.

At least seashells are well-catered-for by accessible books, and
there are a couple of major works on landshells. Nobody has yet done
one a "Compendium" of freshwater shells... or should that be
fluvioshells?

--
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin
New Zealand
Fossil preparator
<[log in to unmask]>
Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut

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