This thread brought back some youthful memories about the neighborhood that I grew up in, which was across the road from an area in New York City in the Borough of Queens that the late Morris K. Jacobson, an associate in the Department of Living Invertebrates of the American Museum of Natural History, and a contemporary and friend of Tony D'Attilio, stated was the "type" locality (for lack of a better term) where Cepaea nemoralis was introduced into the United States. I don't remember off-hand the reference, or whether I picked up this tidbit of information from him in conversation, but with some searching I can probably dig up my reference note on this topic.
During the years that I lived across from that area, it was basically an overgrown, secondary-growth strip of land used as a horse trail along the edge of a golf course. In the early 1900's, this entire area of Queens was farm land , and Cepaea nemoralis was apparently introduced through agricultural means. Today, heading due west for about five miles along the "Corridor" leads to Flushing Meadows, site of the 1964-65 World's Fair and the USTA National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open Grand Slam Tennis Tournament. And for historical buffs, it is just a few miles from the Bowne House, built by John Bowne in 1661, considered to be one of the finest examples of vernacular Dutch-English architecture in the country
But moving away from nostalgia and getting back to this thread -- for as long as I can remember, the Cepaea shells in this population "were" predominantly yellow, with varied brown stripes, but some displayed a solid yellow or pink coloration, with a brown lip. The pinkie's were quite rare. The reason I say "were" predominantly yellow is that the area is now paved over and the tertiary asphalt road has pretty much decimated the natural setting. I do not think that the population has survived the disturbance. You want to know why I departed the area?!
These links lead to some photographs taken of the area and living specimens from that population, circa mid-to-late 1970's.
http://www.worldwideconchology.com/Kissena_Corridor-8_77.jpg
http://www.worldwideconchology.com/Cepaea_nemoralis.jpg
http://www.worldwideconchology.com/Cepaea_nemoralis-in_situ.jpg
None-the-less, this thread on Cepaea nemoralis motivated me this evening, [ "...just seconds ago" ¦;-) ] to open a carton of self-collected shells that were packed and moved with me from New York in the early 1990's including my entire New York collection. I found all of the Cepaea nemoralis shells that I had collected dating back to my childhood. I would have to say that the shells did fade, but not in the strictest sense. The coloration has become muted (semantics?), even being wrapped and entombed for ten years in the darkness of the carton. The most recently collected lots dating back almost 20 years ago show this quite well, whereas the earliest collected shells (mid-1960's, when I was just a newbie at this game we call conchology) have the yellow coloration faded now to very light, pale yellow -- a glimmer of their former selves. So there seems to be a gradual fading, of sorts, towards paler coloration.
Further reading about shell coloration and natural selection of tropical species can be found at:
http://coa.acnatsci.org/conchnet/gold697.html
Rich
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Let us not forget so quickly those who perished:
http://www.worldwideconchology.com/TowerImage©1977-2002.jpg
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