Peggy Williams wrote:

> >COLLECTOR RANKINGS
> >
> >Rank          Competencies
> >
> >Liguus   -    Harvard/Berkeley material, a thinker of the big picture,
> >                  the best of all, creme de la creme.
> >Cypraea -   Extremely proficient and knowledgeable
>
> I object. Anybody can collect Cypraea. Why not make the most proficient and
> knowledgeable those who look to id the really hard stuff, like Turridae (my
> personal favorite).

Hello!

Not true at all. Turrids, known as the pointy shells, are not hard to ID. They
are
all the same; long and pointy with differences only in color, length,dark,
light etc and
other pointys such as the so called Terebras are really the same shell with
subtle differences in color and pointyness. So you see they are extremely easy
to ID; short/dark/pointy, long/dark/pointy, short/light/pointy etc Piece of
cake!

Cypraea are much much different. They tend to roll about a lot, have many
shapes;
elongated egg shape, squashed egg shape, globular egg shape etc AND the teeth,
egads,
they are really hard to classify; labral teeth, denticles, columellar teeth,
fossulas,
on and on. The cribrarulas can drive some collectors quite mad ID'ing, cant
keep up
with the spots, or lacunae if you wish. And those dumb South African cowries
that
keep producing hybrids and left handed offspring.

So you see Cypraea are much much harder than the pointy shells.

As for Liguus, they are worse than wild guppies, no two are the same, HA!!

Later,

Emilio Jorge Power

Please visit;

"The Liguus Home Page"
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Gold/9440/liguus/lighompa.html

"The Polymita Homepage"
http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Gold/9440/polymita/polyhompg.html

West Melbourne, Florida  USA