Dear James (and others)

I hate to burst your bubble. I remember years ago discovering with great
shock that the taxonomy of Muricidae (and many many other molluscs) is
truly screwed up. My first shock came when no two books I could find agreed
on hardly anything. One result was that I purchased a number of species
repeatedly under different names.

Anyhow, Dr. Emily Vokes was kind enough to answer my many stupid questions
and sent me her list of muricid taxa she deemed valid along with some
synonyms. This was a work in progress and she never finished nor published
it by the time of her retirement in 1996. Her last publication in that
regard was in Am. Conchologist December 1996 (I think) where she published
the total number of valid species in the different genera as she saw them
at that time

From her information and others, I made up a database which permits me to
look up things quite rapidly. Here are her opinions:

>     Drupa ambusta W. H. Dall, 1923 Indo Pacific     is spinosa Adams
>     Drupa cancellatum J. R. C. Quoy & J. P. Gaimard, 1833 South Africa
is fenestrata Blainville
>     Drupa clathrata J. B. Lamarck, 1816 Indo Pacific   valid in subgenus
Ricinella
>     Drupa clathrata miticula J. B. Lamarck, 1822 Indian Ocean   valid (as
species) in subgenus Ricinella (Emily has a bias against subspecies)
>     Drupa elegans Broderip & Sowerby, 1829 Indo Pacific     valid - hooray
>     Drupa funiculata L. A. Reeve, 1843 Japan     in genus Morula?
>     Drupa fusconigra R. W. Dunker, 1846 Australia     is muricina

You get the drift?  I can look up the others if you want to continue this
exercise....

Best regards
John Wolff
2640 Breezewood Dr.
Lancaster, PA 17601, U.S.A.