Phil Poland wrote:
> I was using some familiar names that really don't work in strictly
> geographic terms (subspecies).
> An example would be the M. c.. of Sebastian Inlet. On the oyster bars in
> the Indian River, well inside the Inlet, large shells (100 - 150 mm),
> not very different from the ones on the bars of Spruce Creek, lived a
> mile or two from a little grass-filled bay in the 1960s and early 1970s.
> There were huge numbers of beautiful Neritina virginea. Bob Lipe will
> remember my taking him there. The M. corona were rather small (40 mm)
> and very much like the M. c. altispira of Clench & Turner. The bay was
> lost when a small creek feeding it was lost to a new park road. It's now
> a beach near the A1A bridge within Sebastian State park. Intermediate
> morphs were found in the mangrove-rimmed backwaters nearby. I don't
> remember what they were feeding on.
> In Key Largo, on the Bay side, nearly spineless and typically unbanded
> M. c. were, and probably still are, common in the shallow and often
> seasonal runs within the mangrove - 40 -50 mm.  A few miles away on the
> Atlantic shore are the 25 mm "bicolor." Equidistant from these two
> groups, near the Biscayne National Park headquarters at Homestead, are
> M. c. with significant shoulder spines (and often basal ones) and dark
> banding, 30 - 40 mm, that compare well with the altispira of Titusville.
> There are many other examples of M. c. morphs that compare well with
> multiple named "subspecies" but live in quite close proximity. There are
> undoubtedly genetic differences between isolated populations but most of
> the variability seen is almost certainly habitat, mainly food. I
> don't argue that there aren't genetic differences, but to defend the
> traditional names on the basis of geography just isn't accurate.
>
> Phil

I think you are right, and I think too many conchologists spend too much
time trying to come up with new species/subspecies names for the tall,
skinny, glabrous, big-nosed specimen living in West Boca vs. the short,
plump, hirsute, small nosed specimen living in Boynton Beach. We're not
really separate species, just dive buddies. The taxonomists' desire for
all memmbers of a species to be identical is simply unnatural.

For a while, I observed a large colony (3,000 - 5,000+?) of S. alatus on
the outside of the main reef here in Palm Beach county. They were there
for the better part of a year, then were gone. The four specimens I
took, all the same time and within a 20' circle, are noteworthy because
of their variance in shape and especially color; one purple, one dark
brown, one tan, one blond.

A convention of subspecies? I doubt it. Food variations? Only if they
had personal preferances (which O. vulgaris definitely does, btw). I am
convinced it is just blonde vs brunette vs redhead vs bald.

mike

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