At 11:10 PM 1/6/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>>If the apertures were shaped like a capital "D", they probably were a
>>>hermit crab-bryozoan symbiosis.  The bryozoan growing on the shell can
>>>thoroughly obscure the shape of the original shell.  The hermit crab
>>>doesn't have to keep finding new shells-the bryozoan grows along with it.
>>>The "D" shape matches the shape of the crab.  Such symbioses are well-know
>>>from the fossil record (with bryozoans, coral, or hydrozoans coating the
>>>snail), but rarely documented from the Recent.
>>>
>>>David Campbell
>
>David,
>
>Are you talking about what we call "Texas Longhorns"? If so, I have
>collected them live on a reef at 90' here in Sarasota, Florida. I gave some
>to someone at the AMNH.
>
>Peggy
 
No, but these must be related. The outer surface does look like the picture
on page 378 of Compendium, but there are no "horns", the aperture is more
"D"-shaped, and the whole thing is shaped like a gastropod. Possibly, it is
the beginning of a "longhorn"? The largest was 12mm.
 
John Wolff                      [log in to unmask]
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