At 11:29 AM 12/27/1999 -0500, you wrote:
>> Roland Houart has just described two new species of Chicoreus from Puerto
>>Rico and Veracruz in the latest Nautilus.
>
>Tom, Can you give us some more info? I guess I need to subscribe to
>Nautilus...
>

Houart describes Chicoreus colellai from Puerto Rico (~1000 m) and compares
it to C. articulatus. It has a very short siphonal canal and lacks any long
spines.  He also describes C. caudacurta from Veracruz (400-500 m), which
also has a short canal, no spines, and a tall spire. Both are ~40-50 mm in
length.

>I found 16 specimens ranging from 47 to 68 mm last month all in one area at
>low tide on Itaparica Is . Those pretty much all have three knobs, except
>for three specimens which show a hint of a fourth knob in some sections.

So do your specimens resemble mine? It sounds like all of your other
tenuivaricosus have 2 large knobs and perhaps a smaller third one. But the
Itaparica specimens consistently have 3 (sometimes 4 on the last whorl)
more or less equally strong intervarices that are not "knobs" but much
smaller pustules. And my specimens of tenuivaricosus from Guarapari and Sao
Paulo State have much more extensive webbing that reaches from the shoulder
spine to the siphonal canal, while the Itaparica ones have webbing only on
the anterior half. The problem is that Houart illustrates a specimen of C.
beaui that seems to resemble the Itaparica specimens -- much more than they
resemble C. tenuivaricosus. Houart in this paper gives a list of western
Atlantic Chicoreus with their ranges and states that C. beaui occurs from
Florida to Uruguay! Based on this I am leaning towards calling the
Itaparica specimens C. beaui. They are much smaller than the typical
Florida specimens of either the nominate or "branchi" form.








*****************************************
 G Thomas Watters, PhD
 Ohio Biological Survey &
 Aquatic Ecology Laboratory
 Ohio State University
 1315 Kinnear Road
 Columbus, OH 43212 USA
 v: 614-292-6170  f: 614-292-0181
******************************************

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