Not just for cowry aficionados... I'd like to share a curiosity I've just encountered which concerns one of Hawaii's endemic cowries. Perhaps some of our CONCH-Lers have seen something like this and/or are willing to share their thoughts about possible explanations or causes. ************ I have a group of ~1350 Grooved-Tooth cowries with the following coefficients of correlation to the groups' averaged lengths (a method I used before in http://www.cowrys.org/research/hlvteeth.htm ): For ~1350 Cypraea sulcidentata: labial teeth correlate to avgd. lengths ------------0.94 columellar teeth correlate to avgd. lengths --------0.96 labial minus col. teeth correlate to avgd. lengths--0.24 Then I separated the fresh-dead/live-collected shells from the faded, glossless 'beach' shells, making groups of ~570 and ~780 shells, respectively. The coefficients of correlation for these two are: labial minus columellar teeth to avgd. lengths: "beach" "fresh" +0.32 +0.95 That is a surprise! Who would guess that a group with such a close link between the difference of tooth counts and the averaged lengths of their groups could emerge from such a group! Their only difference is the time period in which they grew. Just about every one of these shells came from Makua. The live-collected shells were taken in the last twenty to thirty years, while the 'beach' shells, taken from the 'pockets' (ancient sinkholes) of Makua) are probably four or more decades old, and some are probably hundreds of years old. The question has to be, "What does this say about present and past conditions at Makua?" In an attempt to find if this is "normal" among the cowries, I performed this same routine on my samples of C. helvola and C. fimbriata. The results highlight the curious nature of what is seen above in C. sulcidentata. ~2700 ~500 _____helvola________ ____fimbriata_____ ALL-> 0.67 -0.18 beach /\ fresh beach /\ fresh ~2130 shells ~530 ~180 shells ~330 0.61 0.61 -0.45 -0.56 So the Indo-pacific species (at least, these two) DON'T show the trait that C. sulcidentata does. (However, the emergence, in C. fimbriata, of two relatively well corel- lated groups from one non-correlated group does suggest something.) That, in a very short form, is the puzzle. What's going on with Hawaii's Grooved-Tooth cowry? Is it VERY sensitive to its environs while C. helvola & fimbriata (all above were collected from the Makua/Waianae coast area) are not? Or..., What? Aloha, makuabob (a.k.a. Bob Dayle) _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail