Western Society of Malacologists

2011 International Malacology Reunion - Welcome to La Paz

2011-06-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your interest in the 2011 International Malacology Reunion, the upcoming joint of the 44th annual meeting of the Western Society of Malacologists and the 12th biannual meeting of the Mexican Malacological Society to be held at the Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas of Instituto Politecnico Nacional on the Madre Perla Conference Room of the Hotel Perla, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

The joint meetings of these two societies increased the number of contributed presentations and broaden the scientific communication between our two countries. The 2011 International Malacology Reunion will present a workshop on 'Bivalve taxonomy' by Dr. Paul Valentich.Scott (Santa Barbara Natural History Museum), and a symposium on the 'History of Malacology in Baja California' convened by Dr. Hans Bertsch (Instituto de Investigaciones Oceanológicas de la UABC). The meeting will be filled with 72 oral presentations and 67 posters dealing with molluscan ecology, systematics and phylogeny, paleontology, anthropology, aquaculture and fisheries. These presentations will be complemented by three keynote addresses, a forum discussing the CONABIO species catalog, a display of modern and fossils mollusks, and a photographic exhibit of Prehispanic shell artifacts.

Shuttles and taxis are also available at the airport. The Hotel Perla is about 20 minutes from the airport and is located at Álvaro Obregón 1570, Centro, La Paz, Baja California Sur, México, C.P. 23000. Tels. (612) 122 0777, Fax: (612) 125 5363; Toll free (CA and AZ): 1 888 242 3757, de México: 01 800 716 8799. Meeting registration for early arrivals will be from noon to 7 PM Sunday, June 26th in the lobby of hotel Perla

Additional events include:
Tour Bahía de Los Sueños, Friday, July 1 (8 am to 5 pm).
Bus for 38 seats. Ticket personal $225.00 Pesos
Bus and Lunch (8 h)
The Cactus Sanctuary of Baja California Sur, Mexico
Located in the Ejido (communal land) of El Rosario, only 45 minutes to the south of La Paz (the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur), is the lonely Cactus Sanctuary (Santuario de los Cactus), in which 50 hectares of parkland have been divided into 50 distinct areas to preserve cacti and endemic plants found only in this part of the globe. Signs throughout the Cactus Sanctuary of Baja California Sur, Mexico, share information about unique plant preserve. Spectacular endemic vegetation fills the Cactus Sanctuary at the Ejido (communal land) of El Rosario.
http://www.bajachallengetours.com/santuario-del-cactus.html;
Bahía de Los Sueños

On the eastern coast of Baja California Sur is a stretch of bays and beaches that remain as secluded today as when Cortez landed here in 1535. Bahía de los Sueños (the Bay of Dreams), located 35 miles south of La Paz, is an exclusive resort community that will offer waterfront custom residences, an elite fishing club, a Tom Doak 18-hole golf course, resort hotels and spas, and the tranquility that can only come from such a natural setting.
http://www.bahiasuenos.com/

Email malacologia2011@ipn.mx and (or) efelix@ipn.mx with questions

https://www.cicimar.ipn.mx/malacologia2011/;
http://biology.fullerton.edu/wsm/;
http://www.hotelperlabaja.com/; reservaciones@hotelperlabaja.com;

For more hotels and restaurants:
http://www.vivalapaz.net/
www.turista.com.mx/hoteles-la+paz-13.html
www.zonaturistica.com/hoteles.../la-paz-baja-california-sur.html
www.visitingmexico.com.mx/

ESTEBAN FERNANDO FELIX PICO
COORDINADOR DEL COMITE DE LA REUNION INTERNACIONAL MALACOLOGIA 2011
Chairman of the Organizing Committee of WSM-SMMAC 2011 joint annual meeting
Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas (CICIMAR-IPN) Apdo. Postal 592
Ave. Inst. Politécnico Nacional S/N, Col. Playa Palo de Santa Rita, C.P. 23096, La Paz, B.C.S., Mexico.
PHONE: 52-612-12-25344 ext. 82428, FAX: 612-12-25322,

THE WSM IN SPAIN

2011-02-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

There was no rain, and we weren’t on the plain! Western Society of Malacologists’ members Dr. Ángel Valdés, my wife Rosa del Carmen Campay, and I were in Vigo, on the northwest corner of Spain (approximately 42º 13' N; 8º 45' W). Located on the south side of an elongate bay, Vigo has been a major maritime port and fishing region for centuries. Due west, guarding the bay’s entrance to the Atlantic Ocean, are the two granitic islands that form the Cíes Archipelago, part of Galicia’s Atlantic Islands Land-Maritime National Park.

We were attending the Third International Workshop of Opisthobranchs (1-4 September 2010). Our dear friend and colleague Dr. Jesús S. Troncoso (Professor in the Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal, of the Universidade de Vigo) was the organizing Chairman of this international event. Fellow participants were from a diversity of countries–especially Denmark, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, and the USA. Topics covered the gamut of opisthobranch (sensu lato en extremis!) research topics, from the molecular to the provincial levels of organization and interactions. Check out the website of the Workshop: http://webs.uvigo.es/3iwo10 for more details. Clicking on the links Post-Workshop and Book of Abstracts will provide numerous photographs of the participants, and the abstracts of the oral and poster presentations.

Doing science is hard work—from the field to the lab, to writing and to disseminating the results. To ease the pain, Jesús, Vice Chairman Dr. Victoriano Urgorri, and other members of the organizing committee provided numerous spectacular social events. We had a wine and cheese Mayor’s Reception at the historic “Quiñones de Leon” Municipal Museum, a guided visit to the Museo do Mar de Galicia, and enjoyed a multi-course banquet dinner at the Royal Yacht Club, which featured local marine invertebrates and fish in gourmet local sauces. We had a nudibranch observing/collecting scuba dive, and a daylong sailboat cruise to and meander on the Cíes Islands National Park. All these were in addition to the 3 days of conference sessions.

Studying mollusks has it rewards.

Hans Bertsch

Conference participants at the Cíes Islands National Park

Sea slug scuba divers, Hans and Alexander Martynov

Hans and Rosa, and Jules Verne; in front of the Royal Yacht Club, Vigo

At the poster session (from left to right): Heike Wägele, Rosa Campay, Margherita Gavagnin, Susanne Gunkel and Ángel Valdés

Marine station of the Universidade de Vigo and city hills

ANY IDEAS?

2011-02-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

The gastropod illustrated here was collected from a shrimp trap off San Clemente Island at 700+ m in the early 1990's. It is associated with some fossil gastropods that all seem to have been brought into the trap by hermit crabs. Does anyone have any idea what family or genus this critter might belong to? Thanks.

Charles Powell, II

SCUM POSTPONED

2011-02-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

The SCUM meeting has been rescheduled for March 5. Same time, same place.

SCUM FOR EVERYONE

2010-12-13T11:35:00.000-08:00

2011 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA UNIFIED MALACOLOGISTS MEETING (SCUM) MEETING

Southern California Coastal Water Research Project

3535 Harbor Blvd., Suite 110

Costa Mesa, CA

Directions: http://www.sccwrp.org/ContactUs/Directions.aspx

Saturday, January 22, 2011

9:00 AM to 9:30 AM - Meet & Greet (coffee and donuts)

9:30 AM to 12:00 PM - Introductions & Presentations

12:00 PM to 1:00 PM - Lunch (menu TBD)

1:00 PM to 3:30 PM - Presentations continued

For more information contact: Kelvin Barwick, kbarwick@ocsd.org; (714-593-7475)

I plan on presenting a short talk on my work in the Carrizo Plain and Salinas Valley using mollusk to determine offset of the San Andreas fault since the latest Miocene. Many more talks and likely some more interesting will be presented - I know hard to believe. Its free, interesting, and usually lots of fun. Come and join us.

UP IN THE CHUKCHI SEA

2010-10-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

North of Bering Strait and west of Point Barrow, Alaska, lies the Chukchi Sea - home to a mix of north and west Pacific, circumboreal and Arctic marine fauna. Offshore are areas designated as possible oil lease areas, and the shallow, epicontinental sea is home to ice-dependent marine mammals, migratory whales, and birds including shearwaters, fulomars, and eiders. Small Inupiat communities depend on these resources for food and cultural identity. In August I was invited to participate in sampling to support environmental assessment of the nearshore habitats between Point Hope and Point Lay.

The jumping off point for this expedition to the Chukchi Sea is Nome on the Seward Peninsula. Getting there from Fairbanks in the Alaskan interior requires a flight first south to Anchorage then north and west to Nome. At the small crowded Nome airport, I joined the scientific party, and loaded supplies and personal gear onto a couple pickups, then we drove off through fog and drizzle to the small harbor. We met the crew of the Noresman II and settled in. During the 30 hour transit from Nome to the first sampling station, our scientific party of 10 and crew of six got acquainted, ran through drills, and refined our sampling protocols, for physical oceanographic conditions and water quality, plankton, fishes, and benthic invertebrates. My role, along with Roger Clark, was to identify benthic invertebrates, to count and weigh the catch from the beam trawl sampling.

We were favored by relatively mild temperatures and calm seas. Because of these favorable conditions, we completed three sampling stations in a 10- 12 hour day before steaming to the next day’s starting point.

The benthic invertebrate life a mix of species at their northernmost geographical range, species best known form the west Pacific, and Arctic fauna. We sorted large catches of seastars, shrimps, and ascidians as well as numerous gastropods. The Beringian area of which the Chukchi is the northwestern extent, is possibly the center for the evolution and dispersal of north Pacific Conidae- all those confusing Oenopota etc., also Buccinidae: Buccinum, Colus, Neptunea, Plicifusus, and so on. Velutina and Onchidiopsis, which are generally poorly known were encountered. In addition, we found five nudibranchs, a large red-mottled Dendronotus, a Flabellina, two Arctic species Calycidoris guentheri, and Acanthodoris pilosa. I was working with the epifauna, so bivalves seldom showed up in the catch from the beam trawl. Bivalves are mainly collected as infauna samples taken with a van veen grab.

Next year the project will continue exploring the Arctic nearshore as for as Point Barrow. Meanwhile, I’m identifying voucher specimens of rare or problematic species.

Nora Foster

NEW PAPER ON BIOSTRATIGRAPHY OF THE SAN JOAQUIN FORMATION

2010-08-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay. This past week I had a paper come out on biostratigraphy of the San Joaquin Formation (Pliocene) at the Kettleman City toxic waste dump, North Dome, Kettleman City, Kings County, central California - http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1140/. The paper is mainly a data dump of fossil occurrences in what was a beautifully exposed section, but which is now being filled with all sorts of nasty stuff. The highlights of the paper are presented below.

The stratigraphic occurrences and interpreted biostratigraphy of invertebrate fossil taxa in the upper San Joaquin Formation and lower-most Tulare Formation encountered at the Chemical Waste Management Kettleman Hills waste disposal facility on the North Dome of the Kettleman Hills, Kings County, California are documented. Significant new findings include (1) a detailed biostratigraphy of the upper San Joaquin Formation; (2) the first fossil occurrence of Modiolus neglectus; (3) distinguishing Ostrea sequens from Myrakeena veatchii (Ostrea vespertina of authors) in the Central Valley of California; (4) differentiating two taxa previously attributed to Pteropurpura festivus; (5) finding a stratigraphic succession between Caesia coalingensis (lower in the section) and Catilon iniquus (higher in the section); and (6) recognizing Pliocene-age fossils from around Santa Barbara. In addition, the presence of the bivalves Anodonta and Gonidea in the San Joaquin Formation, both restricted to fresh water and common in the Tulare Formation, confirm periods of fresh water or very close fresh-water environments during deposition of the San Joaquin Formation.

More to follow soon.

Charles Powell, II

2010 WSM MEETING

2010-03-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

_____

The 76th Annual Meeting of the American Malacological Society

The 43rd Annual Meeting of the Western Society of Malacologists

_____

26-30 June 2010, San Diego, CA

AMS/WSM 2010

*** Submission Deadline: 3 May 2010 ***

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.malacological.org/meetings

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Call for Abstracts

As the current Presidents of AMS and WSM, it is our pleasure to announce the upcoming joint 76th Annual Meeting of the American Malacological Society and 43rd Annual Meeting of the Western Society of Malacologists to be held on the campus of San Diego State University (http://as.sdsu.edu/aztec/forms/SDSU_Campus_Map-Parking.pdf) in San Diego, California. The meeting will kick off in style with a welcome reception on the evening of Saturday, June 26th, with scientific sessions held from Sunday (June 27th) to noon on Wednesday (June 30th). Stay the following day, Thursday, July 1st, for organized or informal excursions in the San Diego area.

Venue. - We are fortunate to have reserved our meeting site at San Diego State University. The new SDSU Aztec Conference Center is attractive and easily accessible by car or via public transportation. SDSU has both new suites and somewhat less expensive older dorms, but both are affordable. We have negotiated a great rate for on-campus residents that includes all meals in a modern dining cafeteria. It is very nice! We encourage meeting attendees to select this option in order to promote interactions between meeting participants, but there are also many hotels within fairly close proximity of the meeting site, and non-resident attendees can choose whether to purchase an optional lunch plan during registration, or to plan to forage on their own in a variety of other restaurants or fast food options near the conference center. Public transit options include a new trolley stop, which is immediately adjacent to the conference center or a brief walk across a footbridge from the dorms. The trolley connects directly to the downtown train station and airport (search in Google maps for SDSU Transit Center, San Diego), and provides easy access to the outstanding selection of restaurants and bars in famous Old Town, and in the Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego, about 29 minutes by trolley. The meeting will be affordable for students and close to world-class ocean beaches and other well known attractions that make San Diego such a popular destination to visit.

Sessions. - Scientific sessions are historically great at joint AMS/WSM West Coast meetings.--Dr. Peter Marko (Assistant Professor, Clemson University) and Dr. Alan Kohn (Professor Emeritus, University of Washington) are organizing an AMS-sponsored symposium on "Biogeography of the Pacific." An impressive line-up of speakers has been confirmed, and these include Dr. Thomas Duda, Dr. Suzanne Williams, Dr. Christine Parent, Dr. Cynthia Trowbridge, Dr. David Jacobs, and Dr. Alan Kohn. These leading scientists have agreed to present their research on Pacific molluscan biogeography on June 29. This symposium and associated contributed paper and poster sessions are expected to be a memorable highlight of the meeting. Please check the corresponding box on the abstract submission form if you would like to present a contributed paper or poster in a session associated with this symposium.

--Dr. Jennifer Burnaford (Assistant Professor, Cal State Fullerton) is organizing a complementary special session on invasive molluscs, for which about eight speakers have already been confirmed. Please check the corresponding box on the abstract submission form if you would like to present a contributed paper in this session.

--Dr. Eric Gonzales (Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley) will present a timely Student Workshop, "Genomic Tools for Molluscan Ecology and Evolution."

--Lindsey Groves (Dept. Malacology, LACMNH) will be organizing a session on Molluscan Paleontology 2010. Papers with a paleobiogeographic emphasis are particularly encouraged. Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic are all welcome.

--Further details will be on the meeting website very soon at: http://www.malacological.org/meetings/

Other events include ever-popular auction, banquet, reprint sales, and other fun activities. Please plan to attend and spread the word. Contact us if you would like to ship donations for the auction. Help us to make this joint meeting a success by planning to attend, responding when the call for contributed talks and posters is announced, getting involved, and especially encouraging students and colleagues, including those from Latin American countries, to participate. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the meeting organizers, Doug Eernisse at deernisse@fullerton.edu for AMS or George Kennedy at gkennedy@bfsa-ca.com for WSM.

See you in San Diego!

Doug Eernisse Professor of Biology, Cal State Fullerton President AMS

George Kennedy Senior Paleontologist, BFSA President WSM

MOLLUSCAN PALEONTOLOGY 2010

2010-03-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

WESTERN SOCIETY OF MALACOLOGISTS & AMERICAN MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETY JOINT MEETING

June 26^th – 30^th 2010

Molluscan Paleontology 2010

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS/POSTERS

Molluscan Paleontology 2010 will be held on Monday, June 28^th as part of the Joint Annual Meeting of the Western Society of Malacologists (43^rd) and the American Malacological Society (76^th ) at San Diego State University. Abstracts should be no longer than a single page, and talks should be limited to 15 minutes with 5 minutes for questions. All abstracts, extended abstracts, and papers will be published in the Annual Report of the WSM. Papers dealing with paleo-biogeography are especially welcome. Please send abstracts to session chairman Lindsey T. Groves, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Malacology Section [ lgroves@nhm.org ] by Friday, May 7,2010. See http://biology.fullerton.edu/orgs/wsm/conferences.html [WSM] or http://www.malacological.org/meetings/ [AMS] for additional meeting details.

See you in San Diego!

A LITTLE HELP?

2010-02-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

I'm having trouble getting people to write for this blog, so here I am again. One of my current projects is with Carol Stadum and we're looking at the fossils from middle Miocene limestone deposits in southern Orange County. These deposits are interesting in their history (rocks from these limestones were used for cement for the San Juan Capistrano Mission), geology, and fauna and I'm sure I'll have more to say on them in the future. Right now I need a little help.

Attached is a picture of a ... I'm guessing a Turridae, from these deposits. The picture is of a latex cast and the specimen is less than 1 cm long. Any idea what the genus might be? Or, if I even got the family right (I know I've heard it already - its a Turd). The spiral ribs and whorls that overlap the previous whorl reminds me of something but I can't think of what. Any help would be appreciated.

Charles Powell, II

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR THE 2010 STUDENT RESEARCH GRANTS IN MALACOLOGY

2010-02-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

As part of our commitment to the continued study of mollusks, the Western Society of Malacologists with sponsorship from the San Diego Shell Club and former Northern California Malacozoological Club announces the availability of grants to support student research in malacology. Funds can be used for actual research costs, including but not limited to, field and laboratory equipment, chemicals, photographic supplies, computer time and supplies, microscope usage fees, and for research travel costs.

To qualify you must be a full time student in a formal graduate or undergraduate degree program. There are no citizenship or affiliation restrictions and students from all countries are eligible. The thesis, dissertation, or research project must be focused primarily on the systematics, biology, ecology, physiology, biochemistry, or paleontology of marine, terrestrial or freshwater mollusks in western North America. We will consider Research currently in progress or beginning in the 2010-2011 academic year.

Membership in the Western Society of Malacologists is not required but is certainly encouraged and students receive a discounted rate. Award recipients are also encouraged to present their research at a subsequent WSM meeting. Abstracts are published in the WSM Annual Report.

For more on the application process (see http://biology.fullerton.edu/wsm/grants.html for additional application information and forms) Email to: dzacherl@fullerton.edu

Awards of up to US $1,000.00 are available.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Completed applications must be received no later than MAY 1st 2010. NO exceptions. Please apply early and avoid the deadline rush.

Awards will be announced during the 43nd Annual Meeting of the Western Society of Malacologists, at San Diego June 26- July 1, 2010 (technical sessions June 26-30, field trip July 1), http://biology.fullerton.edu/wsm/conferences.html for additional information.

SCUM IS COMING

2010-01-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

Greetings fellow SCUM! Don’t forget our annual malacological extravaganza is coming up on Saturday, January 23^rd starting about 9:30 am at the City of San Diego’s Environmental Monitoring and Technical Services Laboratory. If you need further information, do not hesitate to call (619 758 2378)! If you would like to give a presentation, please let me know. Laser pointer provided! Thanks to those of you who have already volunteered your talents.

Wendy Enright

IT’S ALL ABOUT NUDIBRANCHS!

2010-01-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

Nudibranchs and other opisthobranchs are without question the most fascinating marine gastropods because of their beauty and astonishing biology. For a relatively small clade in terms of species numbers, opisthobranchs have been able to adapt to numerous niches and evolve many novel mechanisms for feeding and defense.

I have been fascinated by these organisms since an early age. I vividly remember the first time I found a nudibranch in the tide pools and since that day I just couldn’t get enough of them. I currently work at Cal Poly University in Pomona where I teach evolutionary biology, marine biology and conduct research on the phylogeny and systematics of opisthobranchs. I’m also a research associate with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County with which I maintain a close relationship. I have a small, but active lab. My students are working on molecular and morphological phylogenies of different groups, with an emphasis on local Eastern Pacific and Caribbean taxa. An interesting question we are trying to address is whether feeding behavior is driving speciation in some target groups of nudibranchs – the results we are obtaining are pretty surprising. We are also finding that there are several cryptic species that can only be recognized using molecular markers, as their internal anatomy and external coloration are identical.

WSM conferences are excellent venues for first student presentations and I encourage my students to participate in the meetings. We look forward to the next conference in which we will share with you our latest discoveries.

Best regards,

Angel Valdes

CAROL STADUM AND FOSSILS IN ORANGE COUNTY, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

2010-01-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

I was introduced to WSM ten years ago and have been honored to attend their conferences and share research notes and adventures with WSM members. I am a Departmental Associate in the Invertebrate Paleontology section of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Paleontology Division of the San Diego Natural History Museum. Both museums have talented paleontologists who have been very generous with their time and with whom I have completed several research projects.

I am presently finishing a study on Miocene (Relizian benthic foraminifera stage – late early to early middle Miocene) age calcarenite deposit in southeastern Orange County, locally call Pecten Reef. The limey matrix at Pecten Reef contains a large fauna of well-preserved mollusks similar to those now found off Central America along with calcareous algae and some magnificent echinoids.

When I was a child a neighbor took me to a hill east of the City of Orange that was littered with mollusk fossils from the Topanga Formation, primarily the gastropods Turritella ocoyana (Conrad) and T. temblorensis Wiedey. I knew then that the study of fossils was what I wanted to do with my life. I made a collection then, which is now in the San Diego Natural History Museum and I still used it 50 years later to compare fossils I collected then with species found in the Pecten Reef calcarenite. I find it a bit curious that the fossils I collected when I was 8 years old are the same species I find at Pecten Reef. I believe they contain the same fossil fauna because they are the same age, although the were deposited under different environmental conditions.

My work with fossils has included siliceous microfossils while I was at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Washington, and Lamont Doherty in New York. From micropaleontology I transferred my interests to malacology (the study of mollusks) during the 1960’s and 70’s, a time of rapid land development in southern Orange County. This was an amazing time with fossils were being exposed daily. Fortunately I was teaching by then and could rally students to help salvage specimens on weekends. During this time I was able to spend a summer collecting in the Lias limestones of Germany and was overwhelmed with the beauty, diversity, and abundance of ammonites there. Most of the collection I made were left in a museum in Nürnberg .

Since retiring I have worked as a consultant, primarily to the City of Laguna Hills, and have developed a nice museum of local fossils and a strong paleontology program for the City. This has included a video about local fossil recovery and a fossil website http://www.gotfossils.com/.

Whether I am in a lab or in the field, working with fossil shells is a joy. Unlike vertebrate animals which can travel through changing environments, fossil mollusks are generally restricted to specific environments and can provide researchers with information about water depth, temperatures, current direction, salinity, water clarity, and much more. Hooray for mollusks.

Carol J. Stadum

WESTERN SOCIETY OF MALACOLOGISTS ATTENDS XI MEETING OF ASOCIACIÓN NACIONAL DE MALACOLOGÍA Y CONQUILIOLOGÍA (SMMAC) IN VILLAHERMOSA, TABASCO, MÉXICO

2009-09-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

First Vice-President (WSM), Esteban F. Félix Pico, was invited by the President of the SMMAC, Dr. Luis José Rangel Ruiz, to present a Keynote Address and Workshop at the XI Reunión de la Asociación Nacional de Malacología y Conquiliología (24 - 28 August 2009) in Villahermosa, Tabasco, México. The conference was entitled "Malacofauna Asociada a los Manglares" (“The Malacofauna of Mangrove Habitats”), and the workshop was entitled “Biotecnología para Cultivo de Bivalvos” (“Biotechnology of Bivalve Cultivation”). Others special invitees were Dr. Roberto Cipriani (from Venezuela) teaching “Curso Introducción a la Morfometría Geométrica de Moluscos” (“Introduction to the Geometric Morphology of Molluscs”) and “Técnicas para la Redacción de Artículos Científicos” (“Techniques for Scientific Publication”), and MC. Andrés Góngora Gómez (from Sinaloa) teaching “Curso Teórico de Ostricultura: Principios Básicos” (“The Theories of Oyster Cultivation: Basic Principles”). Both also presented magistral conferences.

The meeting involved over 65 participants from 4 countries and at least 12 States of México. It offered a valuable platform for discussions and knowledge exchange between professors, investigators and students from various institutions and organizations. We had representatives from 11 official institutions, with a huge range of ages, experience, background and professional expertise. The hosts of this meeting were the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Sociedad Mexicana de Malacología A.C. (SMMAC) and the Comisión Nacional para la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), with additional support from the Secretaría de Turismo del Estado de Tabasco. The event had one day of 3 pre-conference workshops, 3 days of conferences, and a one day field trip to view the fauna and flora of local rivers, ranchlands and jungles, and the Mayan archeological ruins of La Palenque. The meeting program included 54 oral conferences and 14 posters, with exhibits of 3 mollusc collections. The sessions were in biology, biodiversity, taxonomy, ecology, archaeology, culture, fisheries – just about any field of activity that can be linked to molluscs. At the end, during the general business meeting, the members of the SMMAC voted to hold their 12^th meeting in La Paz, during June 2011 (with Esteban F. Felix Pico as President) jointly with the 44^th meeting of the WSM. It was also proposed to hold the 2013 meeting at UNAM in México City with Dra. Edna Naranjo as President.

Many of us had travelled considerable distances and made major sacrifices to join and participate in the program, with more enthusiasm than economic support, which was scarce because of the global crisis. After the meeting, members of the WSM had a nice trip throughout Tabasco, yes, Hans and Rosa.

Finally, I acknowledge and thank Dr. Luis Rangel (President), from the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, and his team of professors, students and administrators who made this an enjoyable and productive meeting.

Esteban Fernando Felix Pico

Please see: http://www.dacbiol.ujat.mx/eventos/2009/malacologia/index.html for further information and announcements of this meeting.

WSM AND SNAILS IN JAPAN

2009-09-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

"Shells were no longer just things pleasing to the senses and hailing from lands and seas I dreamed of visiting someday, but [they] revealed a context in which organisms live and evolve."

-Gary Vermeij, Nature: An Economic History

This is why I study snails. These (sometimes) under-rated invertebrates not only constitute the second most species-rich phylum of animals on the planet, but because they carry information about their lives in their shells AND fossilize well, they are time capsules of life history as well as their environment.

I am a graduate student in Integrative Biology (http://ib.berkeley.edu) at UC Berkeley and a member of WSM (http://biology.fullerton.edu/wsm). I study a family of mostly high latitude, cold-water whelks in the family Buccinidae. One aspect of my research involves determining the relationships of buccinid whelks to each other by analyzing their genes. My methods of collection and analysis for this project include “fish market science” and molecular phylogenetics.

My most reliable collection site for collecting buccinids was not the field, but the fish market— in Japan. While studying this family of large-ish gastropods, I found out that their global diversity peaks in North Pacific around Japan and the Sea of Japan. Accessibility of these snails would be a challenge, I thought. Many of the buccinids that I wanted to study live on the continental shelf in water more than 100m deep. Research cruises throughout the 1900s have surveyed the coastal waters of the North Pacific, particularly off of the coast of Alaska and one these collections (stored in alcohol) were available at the nearby California Academy of Sciences (http://www.calacademy.org). Alas, years in un-refrigerated alcohol can cause animal tissue to degrade to the point that DNA is difficult, or in my case, impossible to extract for study. To my great fortune, abundant, deep-water Japanese buccinids are accessible from Hokkaido to Kyushu, not in museum collections, but fresh in seafood markets. Buccinid flesh, called tsubu gai in Japanese, is relatively common in seafood markets. It is prepared as sashimi (raw) or cooked in a stew. Two genera, Buccinum and Neptunea, are most often harvested and are considered the best eating.

I went to Japan during the summer of 2008 and collected more than 25 buccinid individuals from seafood markets and generous collectors. Much of my funding was provided by the NSF’s EAPSI program, which I highly recommend to masters and Ph.D. students interested in working on practically any aspect of science in countries of the Pacific Rim and East Asia. I chronicled my experiences, which were rich in snails and in culture, in a blog (http://fossil-tsubu-gai.blogspot.com) as well as in the “Field Notes” section (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/fieldnotes/vendetti_0806.php) of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) webpage. I presented my research results at the lively and student-supportive WSM meeting at Cal State, Fullerton in June 2009.

One outcome of my whelk research challenged some earlier classifications of genera in the Buccinidae— a noteworthy result in a taxonomically perplexing group, but not the most fascinating. What interested me most, and interests me in evolutionary biology in general, are the phylogenies, or family trees, that are produced from species information, in this case molecular data. Phylogenies are excellent evolutionary scaffolds on which one can build analyses of morphology, reproduction, life history strategies, and even behavior. This is one of the cornerstones of modern evolutionary biology, and is the next step in my research.

I’m looking forward to presenting the next phase of my research at the WSM meeting at San Diego State University in June 2010 (http://biology.fullerton.edu/wsm/conferences.html). By then my commute to the meeting will be a breeze, as I will be a postdoc in Pat Krug’s lab (http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/pkrug/lab) at Cal State Los Angeles.

Sugoi!

Jann Vendetti

WORKING ON MOLLUSKS IN ALASKA

2009-08-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve been involved with WSM since 1989, getting more active in the past few years, after dropping out for a while. I work out of my home in Fairbanks, Alaska. The middle of Alaska seems a strange place for a marine invertebrate specialist to live, but Fairbanks was historically the science research center in Alaska. This relative isolation from others in the field of malacology- though not from other marine biologists-makes it important and rewarding to connect through professional memberships and annual meetings.

A self-employed zoologist, specializing in marine mollusks, I offer identification and analysis for environmental assessments, biodiversity surveys, and zooarchaeology. I have over thirty years experience identifying marine mollusks and other invertebrates from the north Pacific and Arctic.

For the past 10 years I have extended my projects to include identifying freshwater macrofauna for environmental monitoring and biodiversity surveys. It is a typical boreal/arctic adaptation to be a generalist and opportunist.

It is interdisciplinary projects those that involve collaboration, that are the most rewarding. One collaborative project has been describing the Late Pleistocene/early Holocene fossils associated with the landscape south of the Bering Glacier. I was fortunate to be invited by Anne Pasch, an emerita professor of Geology from the University of Alaska Anchorage first to help identify the fossils and fragments, then to participate in two field seasons at the Bering Glacier camp. Gail Irvine, a USGS scientist has also joined us as co-author.

Located east of Cordova, Alaska, Bering Glacier and its surroundings has been the site for extensive research. The glacier is several miles inland from the Gulf of Alaska. A large proglacial lake is situated between the glacier and the low forelands between it and the Gulf of Alaska.

The rapid retreat of the 1994-95 glacier surge margin provided unusual conditions in which invertebrate skeletons were deposited on outwash surfaces as entire valves or as fragments of delicate parts.

Our work during several field seasons resulted in an extensive collection of mollusk and other invertebrate shells from Holocene deposits adjacent to the ice margin of the Bering Glacier. Four localities provided the largest number of shells, and we chose those for analysis. We considered the preferences for depth, habitat and feeding class and found consistent differences among them.

Benthic infaunal organisms dominate one site, whereas the other three are dominated by intertidal or shallow subtidal species characteristic of mixed substrates.

What we are showing through this ancient fauna is that an irregular shoreline with a variety of substrates, depths, existed north of the current terminus of the Bering Glacier. The organisms clearly had to be transported south from points of origin to the north. Therefore, the Bering Glacier must have been in a retracted position 13,000 to 7,000 years ago and marine conditions prevailed 30 or more kilometers north of the present coastline. Our report will be included in a monograph on the Bering Glacier and its environment, which we hope will be published early next year.

Nora Foster

FOSSIL MOLLUSKS IN CALIFORNIA

2009-07-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Well since this blog was all my idea I guess I should go first. My name is Charles Powell and I work for the Western Earth Surfaces Team of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. My degrees are in geology, but most of my work is a hybrid between geology and biology. I use mollusks and other invertebrate fossils to solve geologic questions. Right now I’m involved in a project that is trying to make a four dimensional (length, width, depth, and time) map of the San Andreas fault between the San Francisco Bay area and the Tehachapi Range north of Los Angeles. That is, we’re trying to figure out what the San Andreas fault looked like in the past and how it evolved.

My part of this project is to look at formations of similar age on either side of the San Andreas fault to figure out how they correlate and how far the San Andreas fault has moved since they were deposited. I’ve picked the Purisima Formation on the coast near Santa Cruz and the San Joaquin Formation in the Central Valley near Kettleman City. These rock units are of similar age, but standard correlation between the two using extinct species doesn’t work well because the temperatures that were present at both places were significantly different and so their faunas were different. The Purisma Formation was deposited along a cool water, open coast, while the San Joaquin Formation was deposited in an interior shallow bay that had higher temperatures. I’m currently working on a detailed biostratigraphy of both units and will then try to track temperatures shifts – cool to warm, warm to cool – and then develop a pattern of these changes for the two sites. With luck the patterns will be similar and I’ll be able to correlate them. That’s the beginning, but it’s enough for my first blog post. Check back to see what other scientists and students of Eastern Pacific mollusks are doing, and I’ll fill you in on how my work continues and what else I’m doing.

Charles Powell

WHAT IS THE WSM?

2009-07-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

You may wonder, "What is a malacologist?" It's someone who studies mollusks, snails, clams, squids, that sort of thing. Then you might ask, "What is the Western Society of Malacologists?" Looking at our web site at http://biology.fullerton.edu/wsm/ you will find that the WSM is a group of professionals, amateurs, and students interested in molluscan research. We just enjoy studying these incredible creatures! Our area of focus is mainly the northeastern Pacific and adjacent lands, including marine, land, fresh water, live and dead animals and their remains (shells).

As a group, we cover a wide variety of topics dealing with mollusks: the shapes, sizes and locations of some strange creatures; what they do; what they eat and who eats them. We examine the functional adaptations they have evolved for defense and survival; their colors, their spines, their poisons. We describe new species, previously unknown to science, adding to the understanding of the biodiversity of sea and land. Which are in danger of extinction, because of habitat loss, overcollecting, or global climatic changes? Also of interest (to the paleontologists) are groups of molluscs that have lived hundreds of millions of years ago---many long before dinosaurs even existed.

Some of us study archaeology, paleontology and art, looking at the relationships between humans and mollucs. Of course, all of us enjoy eating some of the more tasty ones. Squirting lime juice on a freshly-caught clam, in the shade of a palapa on the beaches of Mexico, is certainly part of our studies!

To be honest, anything we find interesting, we will study. Or we will look for something interesting that no one knows about. I hope you'll come back and see what members of our group are working on.

That's the point of this blog. Enjoy and join our search!

Hans Bertsch