Andy,
In 1988 I worked in Vanuatu for 3 months - 2 of these on the island of
Espirito Santo and collected land, freshwater and marine shells.
No list is available of what marine species occurred there so it is
difficult to make a comparison, however when it comes to land snails there
is good documentation.
In 2 months I collected representatives (dead & live) of approximately 70%
of the described snail fauna for Santo, and in 3 months about 50% of the
fauna for Vanuatu as a whole.
Geoff

>From: Andy Rindsberg <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Conchologists of America List <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: How many species per year?
>Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 17:00:09 -0500
>
>Dear Conchlers,
>
>I'm still in Tuscaloosa, photographing butterflies on my breaks instead of
>collecting seashells on a hurricane-tossed shore like any red-blooded
>arcid.
>Last night I took up a book entitled "The Butterflies of Indiana", by
>Ernest
>M. Shull. I had to overcome a deep and only partly irrational distrust of
>anyone named Ernest to do so, but soon forgot about that and began to enjoy
>the book.
>
>Mr. Shull, or perhaps I should say the Rev. Shull, is an old-school amateur
>naturalist and thus the book is entirely readable despite being a work of
>systematics. He described 149 species that occur in Indiana, with
>life-sized
>color photos of pinned specimens and maps showing the distribution of each
>species by county. Shull's work emphasizes natural history, even including
>the dates and places where he saw pairs of butterflies mating, as well as
>their courting behavior. Since it can be rare to witness such events, some
>species being caught in the act only once during a lifetime of collecting,
>this is valuable information. Shull even appended a list of species that
>ought to occur in Indiana based on their national distribution so
>collectors
>could be on the lookout for them. Altogether, this is a thoughtful and
>appealing book from which we shell collectors might learn a few tricks.
>
>Now, what intrigues me with regard to mollusks is a table on page 15
>answering the question, "How many species may be collected in a year?" A
>simple question, but one that I have never seen on Conch-L! Shull collected
>extensively in every year from 1967 to 1983 -- about 30,000 butterflies,
>which is a lot of times to swoop a net through the Indiana air. During
>these
>years he collected from 61 to 94 species out of the total of 149 known in
>the state (the US and Canada together have more than 700). It should be
>admitted that Shull never collected some of these 149 species, indeed, no
>one has seen some of them there for many years, so he did quite well to
>collect up to two-thirds of the fauna in only a year. For comparison, of
>the
>70 or so species known from Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, I have so far
>photographed (not collected) about 25 since August on the University of
>Alabama campus, and hope to reach 35 or 45 when I have completed a full
>year
>of photography, as most of the species are seasonal and previous workers
>may
>have missed a few.
>
>So, here's the challenge: What about mollusks? What proportion of the
>available species of mollusks have YOU collected from a single area in a
>year, be it a beach or a whole country, or in the case of fossils, a quarry
>perhaps? I'd especially like to hear from those who have collected the same
>place over and over.
>
>Cheers,
>Andrew
>
>Andrew K. Rindsberg
>Geological Survey of Alabama
>
>

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