Greetings,

I've been lurking for a little while and thought i should introduce
myself.  I'm a graduate student in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology
at the University of Chicago interested in macroecology and morphology,
and will be doing my dissertation research on western Atlantic
neogastropods.

Research (the short short version):
I intend to use morphometrics to characterize the shell and the radular
teeth, and to look at how morphospace occupation varies with species
richness.  In order to confirm the morphospace represents a functional
space, i'll be doing a diet-radula analysis, and a variety of
biomechanical tests of the conch.  Among the larger questions i'm
interested in, this would allow a rigorous test of MacArthur's hypothesis
that niche breadth decreases towards the tropics.  Further, this would be
the first documentation of multi-dimensional morphometric patterns across
a latitudinal gradient, and may also shed some light on the
latitude-richness gradient (including the potential for a causal
explanation).  (I can rephrase this in less jargonated prose if anyone is
interested, and can also go into rather more detail).

At the moment, i'm in the final stages of preparing to defend my proposal,
and looking for species lists along the atlantic coast.  I've been having
a surprisingly hard time finding 'local' species lists given how well
sampled the Atlantic has probably been.  The best lists i've found have
been for the Bay of Fundy, and the jaxshells lists for Florida.  What i
mean by 'local' is a list of marine species living between 0-50m depth
that are known to occur in some locality.  A locality could be as large
as a state coastline.  While i am quite aware of Malacolog, its use of
range based presence or absence reports means that species which don't
actually occur in an area (perhaps because of lack of appropriate habitat)
will be reported as present if it occurs north and south of that area.  If
anyone happens to know of locations i can get representative lists,
especially the Carolinas, ~Delaware (or neighboring state), and
Massachusetts (either side of the cape would be great), i would be
extremely grateful.

Cheers,
Nicholas Johnson

The University of Chicago
Committee on Evolutionary Biology

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