Dear Conch-Lers,

Ross updated the website with some comments under my section.  I just
thought I would throw in some comments of my own on Conch-L.

http://www.geocities.com/conchlimages

The white calliostoma with red markings is found off the Florida area.
It is commonly identified as C. rosewateri in collections.  However, the
true Calliostoma rosewateri (featured adjacent to it) is found in the
Grenadines and it has also been recorded from off Colombia.  The
Floridian Calliostoma looks very similar to C. psyche which is also found
in Florida waters.  I really don't see any structural difference between
this other Floridian Calliostoma and C. psyche.  C. psyche seems to be a
consitently smaller shell that has little or no light red color.  It
seems to be more of a shallow water shell.  This gives me the suspicion
it may occupy a different habitat.  Hence, the larger more colorful shell
could be a subspecies of C. psyche.  The true C. rosewateri has larger
beads and has wider spaces between the sprial sculpture bringing out its
irridesent background color.  If someone has any comments about how C.
oregon fits in, I would like to know about it.

Scaphella dohni is a variable shell.  Its pattern and shape can emulate
S. atlantis.  Good photographs of the holotype of S. atlantis are
featured in "The Living Volutes" by Weaver and du Pont.  This shell is
highly reflective when flashed during photography.  It has an exceedingly
fine spiral sculpture.  The holotype appears to have a very
distiguishable lump on the protoconch.  S. dohrni may also have this but
it is not as extreme.  I have not seen any S. dohrni with these two
charactaristics.

The Scaphella on the website has a small hole on the protoconch.  This
changed the shape of the protoconch.  It does have an exceedingly fine
sprial sculpture.

The freak shape of the Neverita duplicata was probably caused by major
damage at a very young stage of growth.

Andrew D
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