-----Original Message-----
From: Katherine Cordy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 4:15 PM
To: 'Conchologists List'
Subject: RE: [CONCH-L] A good basic key?

Probably your best book is American Seashells Edition II.   It’s out of
print and hard to get ahold of.

THAT many mollusks????  How about over 100,000 and many more being named
every year?

Bobbi

-----Original Message-----
From: Conchologists List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Ellen Bulger
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 1:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CONCH-L] A good basic key?

Dear ConchLers,

I'm helping organize a shell collection and could use a little input for
reference material. I'm a bit rusty, having been distracted by the wonderful
world of entomology. I'd like to do this efficiently as possible. In
entomology, I have become accustomed to using dichotomous keys instead of
field guides or picture identification. I know I'll be fine with Caribbean
gastropods. The bivalves will trip me up a bit. Gastropods from other
places, especially those taxa that have no representatives in the Caribbean,
will slow me down too.

In order to shake off the cobwebs and get up to speed, I'd love to get my
mitts on a good key that would take me to genus level. I'd even settle for
family level. I've got a stack of shelling books, but except for one on
Xenophora and the Keen book on tropical west American stuff, they aren't
proper keys.

But I'm thinking, hey, there aren't THAT many mollusks (See what hanging
with entomologists will do to you?). There is probably a basic key online
somewhere, one that will take me to family level at least. Right? Right?

The collection is for educational purposes, and the folks who are utilizing
it are teaching kids from grade school to high school. It's a pretty spotty
pile of odds and ends. Mostly Caribbean, some IndoPacific. Most of it, to be
honest, looks to be bags of beach crap gathered on Aunt Agatha's winter
holiday to Sanibel or Hilton Head. ("Oh I know, we can donate it to the
museum.") Much of what I will be doing is sorting out anything with possible
educational potential from buckets of rubbish. You know the drill. I'm sure
many of you have been there.

In any event, any suggestions for a key? I'm rusty, really rusty. At this
point I'm better at nymphal dragonflies and larval caddisflies.

O HALP, as the lolcats say.

Ellen

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