At 07:54 PM 3/24/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Paul,  Thank you for a wonderful piece.  Are Florida Oliva included in
your "only three species in
>the Caribbean" position?  Where do you place sayana and Petuch's thesis
that "bifasciata" reins in
>Florida and reticularis elsewhere?
 
Marlo:
 
With the merging of Oliva "reticularis group" and Oliva fulgurator together
into the Oliva "fulgurator-reticularis" group Tursch et al have reduced my
three species in the Caribbean to two species, the other one being Oliva
scripta.  This only leaves Oliva sayana that occurs along the Gulf of
Mexico coast and along up SE coast of the U.S.
 
So basically in the Western Atlantic you have two well-defined species
Oliva sayana and Oliva scripta and everything else is part of the Oliva
"fulgurator-reticularis" group, and if one accepts their conclusions the
following commonly (today) used species and subspecies names (not all
inclusive) would be called Oliva fulgurator (Roding, 1798):
 
Oliva reticularis Lamarck, 1811
Oliva fusiformis Lamarck, 1811
Oliva olorinella Duclos, 1835
Oliva jamaicensis Marrat, 1867
Oliva oblonga Marrat, 1867
Oliva bewleyi Marrat, 1870
Oliva formosa Marrat, 1870
Oliva figura Marrat, 1870
Oliva graphica Marrat, 1870
Oliva bullata Marrat, 1871
Oliva circinata Marrat, 1871
Oliva nivosa Marrat 1871
Oliva reclusa Marrat, 1871
Oliva bifasciata Kuster in Weinkauff, 1878
Oliva reticularis bollingi Clench, 1934
Oliva reticularis greenwayne Clench, 1937
Oliva reticularis pattersoni Clench, 1945
Oliva drangai Schwengel, 1951
Oliva antillensis Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva bahamasensis Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva barbadensis Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva bifasciata jenseni Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva finlayi Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva goajira Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva jamaicensis zombia Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva magdae Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva maya Petuch & Sargent, 1986
Oliva bifasciata sunderlandi Petuch, 1987
Oliva circinata tostesi Petuch, 1987
Oliva sargenti Petuch, 1987
Oliva contoyensis Petuch, 1988
Oliva ernesti Petuch, 1990
 
See the article by Tursch et al, 1998 (Apex v 13 no 1-2) for a full list
and explanations.  Actually Tursch and Huart, 1990 (Apex v 5, no 3-4)
originally proposed the same distribution of species and groups for the
Western Atlantic, but what is real neat about the 1998 publication is that
they have plates of all the types of all the species that they looked at,
if they could be found!  For example, no type for Oliva reticularis could
be found in Lamarck's collection!
 
The article also talks about some species that have been improperly
referred to western atlantic species and names of species that have been
referred to both Eastern Pacific and Western Atlantic species.  And Tursch
et al 1998 also deals with the Eastern Pacific species, with Oliva spicata
being referred to as a "complex".  In fact, if you look at some of their
diagrams, there is a lot of overlap between the Oliva
"fulgurator-reticularis" complex and the "spicata" complexes, suggesting a
common ancestry.
 
Tursch et al, 1998 also make a point that within the
"fulgurator-reticularis" and "spicata" complexes that some populations
indeed are very dissimilar in aspect, but when you look at these different
"local" populations quantitatively, there is overlap between these
subpopulations and they cannot be objectively split.  That is, if one just
had a couple specimens from a few different localities the differences at
first glance seem great enough to separate these "end" members into
individual species, as is seen by the many names from Marrat, Petuch and
Petuch and Sargent.  However, when these different end members are looked
at quantitatively and in larger populations as a group they are not
distinct enough to be separated from the overall complex.
 
Finally to Maurizio and others (including myself) who are confused about
what name to associate with what shell, let me quote a couple of items from
the authors Tursch et al about what they thought about the task ahead of
them when they tackled the Western Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Olives:
 
"The geographical distributions of many named taxa in both the "O.
fulgurator-reticularis complex" and the "Olive spicata complex" is poorly
known.  The limits of their variation are indeed so imprecise that correct
identification is often possible only for material from type localities."
 
"Further taxonomic complications arise because several cognate Oliva taxa
of the two faunas (especially in the "O. spicata complex" and in the O.
fulgurator-reticularis complex") are quite similar in appearance.  Early
locality data are often questionable, and in several instances authors have
considered a same taxon to have an Atlantic or a Pacific distribution."
[Of course, the same horror stories can be related in other genera!]
 
"The subsequent naming of many vague and ill-defined forms only added to
the confusion"
 
 
Probably, more than yo wanted Marlo
 
Paul
 
>
>Marlo
>Florida
>
>Paul Drez wrote:
>
>> Maurizio:
>>
>> I guess since no one has replied, although I am days behind in reading my
>> email, I will take my crack at your questions:
>
>