To Linda and others interested in Australian land snails

The Camaenidae fauna of eastern Australian is currently being revised
through the work of Dr John Stanisic and Darryl Potter of the Queensland
Museum and  Andrew Hugall and myself who will be completing our PhD's
sometime this year.

There are a large number of errors etc in the Tucker Abbott Book, some
because of new information and some just simply using the wrong names and
others have poor or wrong locality data and therefore their identifications
are questionable at best.

It is very possible that your specimens that look like the figure of S.
appendiculatus in Abbott but are in fact another species altogether.
Accurate locality information is required however a lot of the specimens
available on the market of these Queensland snails have poor or incorrect
locality data. There are a large number of species of the banded / striped
snails in Queensland and they look similar to each other and it is not
until you being to look at their anatomy, morphology, shell microsculpture
and genetics etc that the patterns being to become apparent.

So my advice is to use the Tucker Abbott book as an indication of the
wonderful variation found in land snails around the world rather than as an
identification guide. If your label says it is Sphaerospira appendiculata I
would leave it at that and wait a few years for all the data that is
currently being put together to be published.

Stephanie

PS. I now have to drive 70km to go to uni, after spending the last 10 days
in Brisbane for the second time in less than a month.



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Stephanie A. Clark

Invertebrate Identification
Unit 4/17 Morris Street
PO Box 418
Summer Hill, NSW 2130
Australia

phone  61 (02) 9799 5689  fax  61 (02) 9799 5610  mobile  0412 372388
email [log in to unmask]