Crayfish fight club

Yabbies (Cherax destructor) are pugnacious little devils. But when you pick fights all the time, it's handy to have a memory for faces. Saves getting your telson kicked a second time.

A paper published recently in PLoS ONE shows that yabbies can not only recognise the faces of sparring partners but remember them for a day or more. (Memory is better in the vanquished than the vanquisher.)

How do they tell each other apart? Face width seems to be important. The little crusties can tell a fat head from a narrow one. Other characteristics play a role but zoologists at the University of Melbourne suggest that it's the combination rather than a specific feature that helps in yabby-to-yabby identification.

The face of C. destructor. (a) Features analyzed on a yabby's face. Colour hue and saturation taken from the mean of 5 points. (2 marked by white triangles.) (b) PCA factor analysis of facial features.

You can read the paper (including details of how the researchers dolled up their experimental animals in lippie and eye shadow carefully marked the animals to change their appearance) here .

Reference
Van der Velden, J, Zheng, Y, Patullo, BW & Macmillan, DL. (2008). Crayfish recognised the faces of fight opponents. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1695. Published online 2008 February 27. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001695.

Circus of the Spineless #30

The latest edition of Circus of the Spineless is up at A DC Birding Blog. Insects, spider, crusties, worms ... and molluscs, of course! And when you're all invertebrated out, look around and you'll find birds by the hundreds.

Snails in the news

Click on the names for the complete articles.

Nacellidae: Cellana spp

Hawaii's island Opihi population continues to be decimated, despite government efforts to manage the island delicacy.

Rhytididae: Powelliphanta

The survival of some relocated snails on Stockton plateau is in doubt, as the Department of Conservation says they are not doing as well as expected.

Hydrobiidae: Potamopyrgus antipodarum

A tiny pest from New Zealand is on the march across the United States in an invasion being dubbed an attack of the clones.

Partulidae: Partula rosea

British conservationists are battling to save a tiny snail so endangered that half the world's population can be found in just one room.

Helicidae: Helix pomatia

… Angel sharks, roman snails, spiny seahorses and short-snouted seahorses joined water voles on the list of creatures to be given extra protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Now we are three

Bram Breure's A Snail's Blog has been added to the Nature Blog Network.

Out of 180 nature-related blogs, only three are molluscocentric — A Snail's Blog, Snail's Tales and this one. Come on, all you shelly people, where the bloody hell are you?

Shell patterns

Colour plays multiple roles in animals. It can be used to signal or to conceal or even to do both, at different times or simultaneously. Colour is complex. Its properties depend on the light falling on it, so what looks like a beacon in the sunlight might disappear into the gloom of the forest. In water, the silvery sides of fish catch the sun then mirror the blueness around. And the duties of colour depend on the capabilities of the observer. Butterfly wings send signals in ultraviolet, invisible to humans but bright and clear to other insects. Bird feathers do the same. Those indistinguishable cryptic species? Not so cryptic to each other. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

Although birds and butterflies are the obvious targets when studying colour, snails get a guernsey too. Nerites on tropical shores exhibit variation in shell colour that ranges from subtle to migraine- inducing. Black and white zigzags are frequent. Some species have red blotches. Others have intricate patterns of flames, lines and chevrons. Are they sending messages? Are they hiding from predators? Or is there another purpose to the markings?

Colour polymorphism occurs when a species comes in two or more distinct colour morphs. (You didn’t see that coming, did you?) The term usually applies to situations in which there is a clear break between one morph and another. They are nicely and neatly defined. This one goes here and that one goes over there.

This isn’t the case with many nerites, though, where one pattern grades into another. You might be able to group them according to a general appearance (flames, zigzags, chevrons) but those patterns aren’t discrete. If you look at them closely, you can’t draw a boundary around them. That one goes here. Or is it here? Or there? Bugger this, I’ll have a beer. If this is the case, the species can be referred to as pseudopolymorphic.

Despite the abundance of colourful nerites on wonderful beaches around the world, the group has been mostly ignored. Maybe researchers have been working on their tans? I dunno. Only the small but perfectly formed and highly pseudopolymoprhic Clithon oualaniensis has been scrutinized in any major way.

Grüneberg studied the species in India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. He described the snails as having “the size and general shape … of a small pea”, which is about right. But that doesn’t give credit where it’s due. Clithon oualaniensis may be pea-like but it comes in such a variety of colours and patterns that each shell is as glorious as a Persian carpet.

Grüneberg categorised the patterns, considering the interplay of axial markings (across the whorls), spiral markings (along the whorls) and the changes during growth. He ended up with 17 variants, including zebra (broad black stripes), tiger (narrow black stripes), large and giant tongues (don’t ask), ladders and a range of coloured spirals. Generally, the dominant patterns in the west differed from those in the east. There appeared to be a discontinuity across the Bay of Bengal. Why?

Earlier work by Neumann on the freshwater nerite Theodoxus fluviatilis demonstrated that environmental factors could have an impact on the shell pattern. In that species, adjustments in Ca/Mg ratio in the water led to changes in markings. Grüneberg wondered whether the influence of monsoon rains on water chemistry might have a similar effect on the tropical Clithon.

It was an interesting idea, but after examining the relationship between the distribution of variants and sea surface salinity, he rejected the apparent correlation as being of no significance. In his 1979 paper, he wrote, “We have, at present, no other hypotheses concerning Clithon polymorphism which could be put to the test.”

He went on to try to elucidate the scope of the problem: “Clearly, we are dealing with a very large-scale phenomenon, and presumably more than a single parameter is involved. Its very magnitude indicates that problem is essential oceanographic in nature, but it by no means clear from which sector(s) of this multi-disciplinary subject the answer will come.”

So where to next? Too big? Time to give up?

This vast geographical range of variation may be an artifact of collection rather than reality. Gardner and colleagues noted that Grüneberg collected material from a wide area but usually only picked up specimens from a single spot on the beach. They decided to examine Clithon variation on a much smaller scale — by working on populations on three different substrates at Dingo Beach and the adjacent Nellie and Champagne Bays, near Proserpine in Queensland.

What they found were significant differences between the frequencies of forms on different microhabitats at each location. At Dingo Beach, for example, green shells with dark patterns were much more abundant on sea grass than on shelly sand or rock and coral, whereas the shells with red, orange or purple ground occurred much less frequently on sea grass. Their results suggested that shell colour variation might have a role in camouflage.

That hypothesis remains untested but it is enticing. To this visual predator those marking disappear against an irregular background. The more closely the colours resemble those of the substrate the more difficult it is to spot the shells.

But if this is a matter of camouflage rather than, say, thermoregulation or a consequence of salinity, then which predators does it work against? Colour, after all, is complex. How do crabs perceive the shells? How do fish see them? Maybe if we look through their eyes we might see a completely different pattern?

Images
Neritodryas dubia, Philippines
Neritina waigensis, Philippines
Clithon oualaniensis, Magnetic Island, Queensland

References
Gardner, M, Mather, PB, Williamson, I & Hughes, JM. (1995) The relationship between shell-pattern frequency and microhabitat variation in the intertidal prosobranch Clithon oualaniensis (Lesson). Malacologia 36: 97–109.

Grüneberg, H. (1976). Population studies on a polymorphic prosobranch snail (Clithon (Pictonerita) oualaniensis Lesson). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 275: 385–437.

Grüneberg, H. (1979). A search for causes of polymorphism in Clithon oualaniensis (Lesson) (Gastropoda: Prosobranchia). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 203: 379–386.

Oliver Sacks on migraines

Fellow migraineurs might be interested in Oliver Sack's latest post on the NY Times migraine blog. In it, he answers readers' questions about this bloody awful affliction. I saw the call for questions the other day but couldn't think of anything to ask because I had a migraine at the time. (Not funny, but true.)

Snails on land

For an awful lot of their evolutionary history, snails were exclusively marine. At some point, they made the break from the briny and moved into fresh water and onto land. (Well, yes, you can file that one under the bleedin' obvious.) Among the molluscs formerly known as prosobranchs, the transitions happened independently among several lineages. Different groups abandoned the ocean at different times and by following different routes. Sea to land; sea to land to freshwater; sea to freshwater; sea to freshwater to land; sea to freshwater to land to freshwa … You get the picture*. But for the pulmonates, the shift was more straightforward.

Oh, wait. Did I just say straightforward? Well, it's a comparative thing.

Let me set the scene. In the old days, gastropod classification was a piece of cake. Prosobranchia (gills), Opisthobranchia (gill-ish), Pulmonata (gill-less). That was just about all you needed to know. Unfortunately, it wasn't very helpful because Prosobranchia was paraphyletic. While malacologists unraveled the complexities of that huge assemblage, the Opisthobranchia + Pulmonata group remained stable.

But, once again, it's a comparative thing. It turns out that Opisthobranchia (nudibranchs and their allies) is not monophyletic. For example, the strange little acochlidiaceans, which live between grains of sand, are more closely related to pulmonates than they are to other sea slugs. As for the sacoglossans … well, they pop up all over the place. In a recent study by Annette Klussmann-Kolb and colleagues, solar-powered sacoglossans clustered with the air-breathing limpets, Siphonaria. Does that make sense? As much as anything does in the world of gastropod phylogeny.

So what does this all mean for the origin of land and freshwater pulmonates?

The analysis by Klussmann-Kolb and colleagues revealed that the freshwater Hygrophila and the terrestrial Stylommatophora were both monophyletic — but weren't sister groups. When the researchers mapped habitats onto their phylogenetic tree, they found that Hygrophila had not only moved directly from the sea to freshwater without a terrestrial stopover but the group had done it only once. Having adopted a freshwater life style, the snails stayed there.

Stylommatophora made its transition to land via mangrove, saltmarsh and other intertidal environments. That group — which contains all the well-known land snails and slugs — probably also changed habitat only once. Its closest relatives (ellobiids, onchidiids) mostly occupy the marine marginal zone but a handful of them have become truly terrestrial. So the shift may have happened several times among the pulmonates but it has always taken the same route.

Well, I did say that it was comparatively straightforward.


Reference
Klussmann-Kolb, A, Dinapoli, A, Kuhn, K, Streit, B & Albrecht, C. (2008). From sea to land and beyond — new insights into the evolution of euthyneuran Gastropoda (Mollusca). BMC Evolutionary Biology 8:57 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-8-57. OPEN ACCESS.
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* Don't ask me to trace the paths. I could tell you but you know what I'd have to do then.

Very mild super powers

David O'Doherty has very mild superpowers (VMSPs). Well, he's not the only one. I can make wickets fall at one day matches. All I have to do is leave the television to make a cup of tea, go to the loo or answer the phone and someone gets out. It's true.

Yeah. And it's also true that David O'Doherty is funnier.

Chain reaction

BBC Radio 4 is running a new series of Chain Reaction. It's a chat show in which one week's interviewee becomes the next week's interviewer.

In the first show, Catherine 'Am I bovvered?' Tate talks with David 'The Doctor' Tennant about his career. There are some top moments, including excruciating dialogue from Tennant's stint as a serial killer on The Bill and a rant about astrology, which segues seamlessly into a rant about interactive news television. Of course. The audio is available now. I'm not sure whether it will be archived.

In the next episode, Tennant talks to Richard Wilson from One Foot in the Grave. Then Wilson interviews Arabella Weir, who finishes the series with a chat to Paul Whitehouse.

It's fun all the way down.

I and the Bird #69

Grrlscientist is hosting the latest edition of I and the Bird at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, interrupted).

While you're there, check out the fabulous animal mosaics from the NY subway. You'll be glad you did.

Semester started today. Lots of things happening at work — but nothing I can spill the beans about. (Ahem … nothing about which I can spill the beans.) Haven't been anywhere with my camera, either. Oh, there's always the garden but that isn't at its best. Despite the dry weather — or perhaps because of it — there's been nothing of note hanging around in the vegetation or under the plant pots. Lots of aphids but there's only so much entertainment to be had from watching a bunch of tiny bugs feeding on the weeds. Were they snails, that'd be a different story, of course.

Because of the precipitous changes at work, I've had to postpone my long service leave until late April. Had I been able to take it when I'd planned, I'd be in Far North Queensland now with my car and camera and computer. I have to wait another nine weeks before I can head north. The weather will be more benign then (a very active monsoon trough is doing its thing across the Top now), which will be good, but it's still another nine weeks …

Taps nails on desk.

Death of a bee

An orb-weaver (Eriophora biapicata) has set up a permanent web between the tree ferns. More commonly, garden orb-weavers dismantle their webs at dawn and rebuild them in the evening but this spider has left its work in place for more than a week.



The web spans a bed of fan flowers (Scaevola), which is popular with feral honeybees, native leaf cutters (Megachile chrysopyga) and several species of hoverflies. This poor worker came a cropper when she flew into the sticky threads. That it held her for so long demonstrates the adhesive power and strength of the trap lines.


The bees and breeze shred sections of web during the day. On returning at dusk, the spider's first duty is to patch up the holes. Then it takes its place at the hub, waiting for the fan flower's night visitors.

Cuttlefish camouflage capers

Ages ago, the Townsville Bulletin published an article under the headline 'Smithsonian Institute worth a visit'*. In the same spirit of understatement, let me say that Carl Zimmer's blog The Loom is worth bookmarking.

In his latest article in the New York Times, he interviews marine biologist Roger T. Hanlon and gives the lowdown on cephalopod camouflage. (Link to NYT in blog post.)

Here's Hanlon's video on the fine art of octopus concealment.



And the delightful Digital Cuttlefish makes an appearance in the comments section of The Loom. More of the poetic cephalopod here.

HT to d**ky
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* They also published a profile in which they referred to the well-read and talented subject as a 'polymorph'.

Risky business

Semester starts on Monday. I don't know why but that news comes as a shock. Somehow, the 25th February seemed to be an impossibly distant date — like Y2K. But it's on its way and there's not much we can do to stop it bar bringing about the end of the world as we know it. And even I recognise that causing the destruction of humankind just so I can avoid the first years is an over-reaction*.

The Honours students enrolled a couple of weeks ago and have already embarked on their projects. We ran through their risk assessments today.

Remember the old days — I'm thinking of last Thursday — when an assessment consisted of identifying the potential risks of a procedure (experiment, field trip, staff meeting) and working out ways in which those risks could be eliminated or, at least, minimized? All on one form. Okay, two. But no more than that.

Now, a risk assessment requires seven forms. The first one is my favourite**. It categorizes potential risks and tells you which of the other six forms are applicable. It doesn't have a section for field work but it does have a list of hazards that includes:

• Heat (e.g. fire, flames)
• Air conditioning
• Electromagnetic radiation
• Gravity

They forgot to add rifts in the space-time continuum and wandering black holes.

It does make yer think about how it used to be. When I was a postgraduate, we'd head off on field trips into the back of beyond without a first aid kit or radio*** and we'd often not even bother to let anyone know where we were going.

Not that it helped when we did. I recall a trip where someone insisted that we filed a travel plan with an estimated time of return. If we did not report back by that deadline, they'd alert the local authorities — such as they were. Anyway, we did run into difficulties in the shape of a couple of slack-jawed, banjo-playing nutters, who thought that giving us a hard time would be hilarious. One of the very few occasions when I've thought it would've been useful to have the rifle in the back of the Landcruiser****. In lieu of an armed response, we talked our way out of it and left. But because our departure was delayed by the half-witted hicks, we didn't get back until waaaaaay past the deadline … to find that the responsible person had buggered off and left us to our fate. That's one of the other times I hankered for the rifle*****.

Those days are over, which is just as well. But, really … gravity?

___________

* Of course, you know it's not really the students I want to avoid.
** In a novel use of the word.
*** But we always remembered the beer.
**** Not with any great degree of seriousness, though.
***** See ****

Science Made Stupid

Newton's Laws

Isaac Newton also used direct observation to formulate his laws.

Newton was in government service for many years. His first law states:

* A body at rest tends to remain at rest, while a body in motion at a constant velocity in a straight line tends to continue in that motion.

Clearly, this law is based on first-hand observation of a bureaucracy in action.

One night, Newton became engaged in a heated argument at a local bar over a question of epicycles, leading him to punch his opponent in the nose. After being thoroughly worked over, Newton comtemplated the results and announced his next law:

* Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

In a well-known story, Newton discovered gravity when he was hit on the head while sitting under an apple tree. This tale is, of course, fictitious. It was actually a fig tree, and the result was his best-known theory:

* I bet you could make a swell cookie out of these figs.

You can read more of Tom Weller's 1986 Hugo Award winner Science Made Stupid here.

I especially like his chapter on the Earth. At last, someone ties in Shakespeare with atmospheric dynamics. But this chart of geological periods is disturbingly similar to one I marked in a recent exam. I wish I were making that up.
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Hat tip to dark* :)

Excuses, excuses ...

The rain started the moment I bought the new camera, so I haven't had much chance to use it. Here are a couple of shots taken with the 60mm Micro Nikkor.

Overcast weather meant I had to use a fill flash to get a good depth of field. Unfortunately, there was still sufficient light to soften the images when I and/or the subject moved.

I'll get the hang of it soon.

I think these building blocks were designed by the people who put together university policies.

I and the Bird #68

While we've been complaining about birding in the heat and humidity, Nick at Biological Ramblings has been freezing his ... parts ... off. Join him and fellow bloggers in an ornithological journey through the winter doldrums from denial to acceptance.

Or you could just follow the waders south.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

There's a running gag in Dr Who. (Okay, so it's only run twice but that's close enough.) As the Doctor prepares for departure after saying farewell to his companion, something happens to the TARDIS. In the most recent series, he waved goodbye to Martha, closed the door and … well, see for yourself.



The reason I mention this is the remarkable similarity between this scene and my life at the moment. Not literally, of course (which is a shame) but metaphorically (which isn't).

At home, I'm under siege from the mice and moths, my nice neighbours are selling up, my house is crumbling around me and hoons have moved in at the end of the street. But these are minor irritations compared to the absolute nonsense at work. Can I stick it out until April 2009 without going bananas?

Even the networked printer knows the answer to that.



(And the maintenance people have been going berserk with 'on brand' signage. My current favourite is the advice that appears above the cisterns in the loos: Full flush for emergency use only. I must seek their guidance on what constitutes an emergency. A floater? Diarrhoea? Nuclear meltdown?)

Anyway, my world (which is rather limited) is full of WTF? moments right now. I have refrained from voicing that opinion in staff meetings — including a three-and-a-half hour borefest this morning. (Now there's a reason to hit the full flush.) How long I can keep my silence is another matter.

Shorter Snail: I'm leaving as soon as possible. To hell with the consequences.

Camaenids ain't camaenids

If you see a snail in the Queensland rainforests or sandstone gorges near Alice Springs, the chances are it will be a camaenid. Australia has hundreds of species, many of them big and strikingly coloured. But despite their size and splendor, they're seriously undervalued as a subject for study. And now it appears that what we thought we knew about their evolutionary history is mostly … wrong.

Texts will tell you that Camaenidae has a disjunct distribution. It occurs in Australia, eastern and south-eastern Asia, central America (including the Caribbean) and northern South America. The family is largely tropical, although a few species live in southern Australia and the milder parts of China and Japan. In many parts of the range, they live in humid forests and woodland, but rugged Australian species dwell among the red rocks and spinifex of the central deserts. (That's not a shell. This is a shell.)

Fossils assigned to Camaenidae have been found in the Palaeocene of North America, the Pliocene of South America and Pleistocene of the Caribbean. In Australia, the earliest camaenids are known from late Oligocene deposits in NW Queensland.

On the basis of the modern and prehistoric distribution, Alan Solem (1959) postulated that camaenids originated there and dispersed southwards into South America and eastwards into Asia and Australia. Subsequent extinction in North America and Europe split the family into two geographically isolated groups. He suggested that they arrived in Australia in two waves, which are represented by an older endemic lineage and a more recent one with much in common with the fauna of New Guinea.

But his hypothesis presupposes that Old World and New World Camaenidae belong to the same group. How strong is the evidence supporting that?

Short answer: Not very.

Long answer: Not very. And here's why ...

There's a problem in actually knowing what a camaenid is. The family is defined by the absence of certain characteristics — by what its members don't have rather than by what they share with one another. Pilsbry (1939: 411) referred to them as 'Helices without dart apparatus' in which the 'penis [is] continued in an epiphallus and a flagellum (the latter sometimes vestigial or wanting) [and the] spermathecal duct [is] not branched.' Is there significance to the absent dart apparatus? Was it never there? Was it lost? What about the unbranched spermathecal duct? Lots of nots but nothing unique to tie them all together. Camaenidae defined in this way could be nothing more than the bunch of wallflowers left after other species have been assigned to families.

Craterodiscus pricei is a good example of this. On describing the species from the shell only, Don McMichael (1959) tentatively assigned this tiny, rather nondescript North Queensland snail to Helicarionidae. When Solem (1973) examined anatomical material, he shifted it to Camaenidae — but only after a process of elimination. He classified the species by what it wasn't rather than what it was. Craterodiscus remained in Camaenidae until Simon Tillier (1989) moved it into Corillidae. Once again, the assessment was based an absent morphological character. There it stayed until Christopher Wade and colleagues (2001, 2006) re-examined its affinities as part of a study of land snail phylogeny. Using molecular data, their work revealed that Craterodiscus was neither camaenid nor corillid. In fact, McMichael had pretty much got it right. The tiny, rather nondescript snail belonged with the dyakiid – ariophantid – helicarionid semi-slugs*.

So does these molecular data shed light on the taxonomic tangle of Camaenidae?

I'm glad you asked.

Yes. Yes, they do.

The study that put Craterodiscus back in its place also looked at a number of camaenids from Japan, the Philippines, Australia and the Caribbean. The camaenids did not resolve into a single lineage. They didn't even resolve along biogeographical lines. They were mixed in with helicoids (with and without dart apparatus) from a range of families. But not only did the molecular data demonstrate that Camaenidae was a freakin' mess — quelle surprise! — it also sorted them into neat(ish) piles.


Maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree showing the evolutionary relationships among the Helicoidea (Wade et al., 2007).

It appears that Old World 'camaenids' are closely related to Bradybaenidae, a group of Asian snails possessing a dart apparatus. According to a further analysis (Wade et al., 2007), the species are mixed together like a well-shuffled pack of cards. New World 'camaenids' show a different pattern. Some species cluster with the European Hygromiidae (with dart apparatus), whereas others hang out with Caribbean Sagdidae (also with dart apparatus). Did I mention that the absence of the dart apparatus was a crap characteristic on which to base a classification?

So, is there any morphological character that might be helpful when trying to sort of camaenid affiliations? Well, yes … sort of. Many bradybaenids possess a structure called, unglamorously, a head wart. (But that's what it is — a patch of enlarged tubercles that sits between and slightly behind the upper pair of tentacles.) A number of Old World 'camaenids' have a similar, if not identical, structure. In some, it is permanently everted (the state in bradybaenids); in others, it can be tucked away into a transverse pouch. (Just the thing for Tropical Friday.) Very little work has been done on the head wart but it might be a useful character. Someone start looking.

Having illuminated some of the camaenid conundrum, the molecular analyses now leave us with a nomenclatural problem. Do we take the plunge and call the Old World group something different from the New World group? Or do we deploy the inverted commas with aplomb? Sometimes systematics is like wallpapering — you smooth down one bubble and it just pops up somewhere else.

______

* And the dyakiid – ariophantid – helicarionid semi-slug thing is a story for another day.


Reference
Wade, C.M., Hudelot, C., Davison, A., Naggs, F., Mordan, P.B. (2007). Molecular phylogeny of the helicoid land snails (Pulmonata: Stylommatophora: Helicoidea), with special emphasis on the Camaenidae. Journal of Molluscan Studies, 73(4), 411-415. DOI: 10.1093/mollus/eym030


Additional references

McMichael, DF. (1959). A new species and genus of land snail from North Queensland. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 1: 31 – 32.

Pilsbry, HA. (1939). The land Mollusca of North America. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Monograph no. 3 2: 1 – 573.

Solem, A. (1959). Systematics and zoogeography of the land and fresh-water Mollusca of the New Hebrides. Fieldiana, Zoology 43: 1 – 359.

Solem, A. (1973). Craterodiscus McMichael, 1959, a camaenid land snail from Queensland. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 2: 377 – 385.

Tillier, S. (1989). Comparative morphology, phylogeny and classification of land snails and slugs (Gastropoda: Pulmonata: Stylommatophora). Malacologia 30: 1 – 303.

Wade, CM, Mordan, PB and Clarke, B. (2001). A phylogeny of the land snails (Gastropoda: Pulmonata). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B 268: 413 – 422.

Wade, CM, Mordan, PB and Naggs, F. (2006) Evolutionary relationships among the pulmonate land snails and slugs (Pulmonata, Stylommatophora). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 87: 593 – 610.

I've just bought a digital back for the Nikon gear. I have a film back that I haven't used for ages and a bunch of lenses and a macroflash all sitting in the cupboard, doing nothing. What a waste. I decided to take the plunge. So now I've joined Digital SLR World (ie the 21st century).

In a moment of financial insanity, I also bought a new long lens. It's a Nikon 80 – 400 mm VR (vibration reduction) and it is about the size and weight of a small wombat. Because it's so bulky, I'm going to feel a bit self-conscious lugging it around. Perhaps I need a retinue of porters?

When I get over my shyness, I'll post some pics of and from it.

The ultimate in mondegreens

I'm sure this clip has been doing the rounds for aeons but I saw it for the first time today. A children's show from the Netherlands translated phonetically into English. I'd loved to know what the words really mean. Maybe it is all about farting in ducks?

WARNINGS:

1. NSFW. The c-word appears in the subtitles. In fact, two different c-words appear. Frequently.
   
2. After the first chorus it gets a tad silly.
3. The song is a bit too catchy, so you may find yourself singing it at work.
   

ETA: HT to the Smart Bitches