Recent news on the snail story …

It’s March, and we’re on to Blog 3, so still going strong. Continuing with the current theme of marine gastropods, we’ve just had a new piece that recent master’s graduate (and now PhD candidate) Stephen has had published. We still have to get onto a discussion of his masters thesis, but that will come in time!

Stephen’s third paper was published in Zootaxa, and evaluates the taxonomy of marine snails belonging to the genus Laevistrombus (Fig. 1). After the first major revision of the family Strombidae (Abbott 1960), Laevistrombus was considered monospecific (that is, only one extant species in the genus). This is where we could have a whole discussion on whether to lump or split organisms into distinct species. Abbott (1960) was a lumper, whereas recent revisions on this genus have considered Abbott (1960) to have been too conservative. While later authors suggest that there are three extant species, we suggest that further splitting is needed, proposing that L. taeniatus and L. vankorensis be elevated to species. We provide descriptions on the morphology and distribution to do this.

Fig. 1. The five extant members of the Laevistrombus: A) L. turturella; B) L. taeniatus; C) L. guidoi; D) L. canarium; and E) L. vanikorensis

Fig. 2. Morphology of a snail

We provide the description of five species of Laevistrombus in the paper. For each, we provide the taxonomic identification, the definition, type locality and distribution. We also identify the type material. Comparative analyses of this complex have been problematic specifically because there has been a lack of designation of the type material.  The shells of these animals are quite beautiful (Fig. 1). They are smooth, solid and quite round. The outer lip is quite thick and smooth, becoming a bit harder and rougher (calloused) towards the head region. The columella (the spiral bit that goes through the middle, Fig. 2) is smooth and thickened in the middle. To see what makes each of these species different, you can check out the paper by clicking on the link under List of Publications.

Hopefully you can see that there’s a lot more to marine snails that you probably thought. And there will definitely be more to come in the future. I think one of the most important lessons out of this paper is that lumping or splitting is perhaps a matter of opinion when there isn’t solid evidence or appropriate descriptions. If you state specifically why you think something is different to something else, and you provide evidence to support that observation, then there is no ambiguity in your rationale for splitting or lumping. However, if you just say that things look alike, and lump them together without taking a holistic view, then you introduce ambiguity, which causes confusion. 

You can read more about my research in my publications, listed on my blog. You can also find me on ResearchGate, the JamesCook University website and Twitter.