Papers in Marine Biology and Oceanography. Suppl. to vol. i of Deep- Sea Research, pp. 3l»..l20. 



Scaphopods of the Atlantis dredgings in the Western Atlantic 



with a catalogue of the scaphopod types in 



the Museum of Comparative Zoology * 



By Ruth D. Turner 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. 



The following report is based mainly on the collection of scaphopods made by the 

 Atlantis in 1938 and 1939 during two trips to Cuba. A small amount of hitherto 

 unworked material in the collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology is also 

 recorded where it is of significance in the distribution of the species concerned. This 

 material includes a number of lots collected by the late Dr. Leo A. Burry of Pompano 

 Beach, Florida, who did a great deal of dredging off the Florida Keys and in the 

 region off Fort Walton, Florida. In addition there are several lots of Blake and Hassler 

 material that had not been previously worked, as well as miscellaneous lots that have 

 come in from various sources. Localities given by Henderson (1920) have not been 

 duplicated in this report; all records are of new locahties or new depth records. 



Though there are no new species in this material, it is of great value in extending 

 the ranges of many species, and in several cases these constitute the second known 

 record for the species. Except for a few intertidal species which may be common, 

 records of scaphopods are always rare, consequently it seems advisable to put these 

 new data on record. This is especially important since Henderson's report is relat- 

 ively recent and quite complete, so that a new monograph probably will not be 

 attempted for some time. 



It is interesting to compare the results of the Atlantis trips with those o*" the 

 Johnson-Smithsonian Expedition to the Puerto Rican Deep as reported by W. K. 

 Emerson (1952). Both collected fifteen species which could be positively identified, 

 and of these only eight were taken by both, which would indicate a purely chance 

 factor in collecting. Undoubtedly many species are far more widely and evenly 

 distributed than would appear from the published record. Only after continued 

 dredging over a long period of tme will it be possible to derive accurate distribution 

 patterns of these deep-sea groups. When sufficient material is collected, most of the 

 subspecies and even some of the species now recognized will probably be shown to 

 be mere populations of widespread, polymorphic species. This was certainly evident 

 from the study of the material covered in this present report. In most cases classifica- 

 tion has been to species only, as it would appear that many of Henderson's sub- 

 species are of doubtful value; in many cases the ranges of two subspecies overlap 



almost completely. 



According to his introduction, Henderson, at the time he wrote his monograph, 

 had the entire collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology for study; however, 



* Contribution No. 779 of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 



309 



