George and other Amphidrom-philes,

I cannot speak to Bunjamin Dharma's reasoning for publishing the nova sp and ssp of Amphidromus in Schriften zur Malakozoologie [ref.: Dharma, B. 2007. Report on fossil Amphidromus and description of new species and new subspecies of recent and fossil Amphidromus from Indonesia (Gastropoda, Pulmonata: Camaenidae). Schriften zur Malakozoologie 23: 45-78.] since I had no involvement in his research or publication.

I can, though, speak about the Amphidromus poecilochrous complex, which includes two of the subspecies from Lombata and Adonara Islands that are included in Bunjamin's publication.  For more than 20 years, Mike Severns of Hawaii and I have been investigating the relationships between the various Amphidromus populations throughout the Indonesian Archipelago.  The Amphidromus poecilochrous complex has laid the groundwork for some very interesting research.

The complex ranges from Sumbawa Island in the west (type locality) eastward to Adonara Island.  Mike has extensively collected through the region for the past two decades accurately sampling populations from numerous localities in the range of the complex.  We have dug through the literature and compared museum material with recently collected lots.  The big picture is that Amphidromus poecilochrous represents an extremely variable group.  Through out Flores Island, isolated populations exhibit distinct color forms, but unlike isolated islands, the large island populations tend to blend into adjacent populations, as would be expected on large land masses.

On small islands such as Lombata and Andonara, distinct forms have evolved with no mixing between adjacent islands.  Small islands are known to harbor isolated and unmixed populations of Amphidromus (see Isolation & Evolution of Amphidromus in Nusa Tenggara - http://www.conchologistsofamerica.org/articles/y1997/9706_Gold&Seve.asp - an article that is based on Mike's years of field research and our years of comparative research between well documented populations.  Mike's field work is impeccable, and has been the basis for all of our research.

Unfortunately, Bunjamin's article, and in particular, the description of the Lombata subspecies in Schriften, predated the write up of Mike's research on the A. poecilochrous complex, and the description of the Lombata snail.  This was being written up by a malacologist here in the U.S.

The Lombata snail has caused a great deal of confusion -- the recent history of this snail deserves an explanation.  Back in the 1970's I and other collectors were exchange with the late Renate Skinner, then living in Bali.  She was sending samples of the Lombata snail, which she said had been identified for her as Amphidromus floresianus.  For 20 some-odd years I insisted that this was not A. floresianus, but a form of poecilochrous.  Unfortunately I did not have enough well documented A. poecilochrous material from other localities to be able to make any definitive remarks about its relationship to A. poecilochrous.  Mike's field work filled that void.  We were able to show that the small islands within the range of the A. poecilochrous complex harbored distinct forms.

In the interim, numerous publications, and data tags had the Lombata species labeled as A. floresianus.  The species resides in uncountable numbers of collections with the wrong name.  The true A. floresianus is a large, solid snail shell, with a black lip.  It is recorded only from southwest Flores Island and eastern Sumbawa at the extreme opposite end of Flores Island from Lombata Island (this has not yet been confirmed and represents a whole new area of research).  A picture of the true A. floresianus can be viewed here - http://www.worldwideconchology.com/fam/Camaenidae.shtml#Amphidromus_floresianus

The Lombata snail is illustrated here - http://www.worldwideconchology.com/fam/Camaenidae.shtml#Amphidromus_poecilochrous

As you can see, both are not at all related.

The isolation and uniqueness of the Lombata snail, now Amphidromus poecilochrous lombataensis is undisputed, and the same holds true for the Adonara snail for the same reasons.

I hope at some point Mike Severns will publish his field research to better explain the fascinating and diverse A. poecilochrus complex.  There is more to the story than meets the eye!

And to answer JR's question about the name Amphidromus poecilochrous asmani, I have no record of the species name. It may be in publication, or one of many manuscript names that occasionally appear on the Internet with no publication to support the name.

Rich
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www.worldwideconchology.com
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