Annotated Bibliography of the Hard Clam 



(Mercenaria mercenaria) 1 2 



J. L. McHUGH, MARJORIE W. SUMNER, PAUL J. FLAGG, 

 DOUGLAS W. LIPTON, and WILLIAM J. BEHRENS 3 



INTRODUCTION 



Work on this bibliography began about the beginning of 

 September 1974, when an undergraduate student, Douglas Lip- 

 ton, started work on a summary of the life history of Mercenaria 

 mercenaria as a tutorial research project. Serious work began in 

 November 1975, when financial support was received from the 

 New York Sea Grant Institute. At the time, we believed that we 

 might find a few hundred major references to M. mercenaria in 

 the literature, and were not prepared for a literature that exceeds 

 2,200 titles. We now know why authors of bibliographies often in- 

 clude the adjective "partial" in their titles. Although we combed 

 the literature assiduously, we are certain that we have missed 

 references. We also have not been able to locate some citations. 



The search began by reviewing some obvious sources, such as 

 Proceedings of the National Shellfisheries Association, Biological 

 Bulletin, major fishery journals, and the like. We decided at the 

 beginning to write new abstracts in almost all cases, because 

 many authors do not know how to write an informative abstract, 

 or have too many constraints placed on them by editors. After 

 writing the abstract, we checked the literature cited for references 

 that clearly referred to hard clam, or which appeared to be perti- 

 nent even if the species name did not appear in the title. These 

 were located and abstracted, and the process was repeated. At this 

 stage we are finding virtually no new citations, except those in 

 current issues of journals. 



This process itself was partially self-defeating, because we 

 found that when specific reference to hard clam was not contain- 

 ed in the title, the paper sometimes was pertinent, sometimes not. 

 We felt, however, that a certain amount of oversearching was 

 necessary for completeness. Worse still was the practice of some 

 journals, including many of importance, of not including titles in 

 literature references, which made the search doubly difficult. We 

 question whether the time and space saved by omitting the title is 

 a good idea. 



Another set of problems that bothered us considerably was 

 caused by carelessness. Every possible error that could be imagin- 

 ed was met. We found misspelled author's names, wrong names, 

 names of joint authors missing, names of joint authors added, 

 wrong dates, incorrect titles, wrong journal names, wrong volume 

 and issue numbers, and wrong pagination. Total absence of error 

 was not expected, but such errors were too frequent to be ascribed 

 to chance. Many authors obviously do not take literature cita 

 tions very seriously, record references by a form of shorthand, and 



'The studies on which this paper is based were supported by grants from the New 

 York Sea Grant Institute. 



'Contribution No. 299 of the Marine Sciences Research Center of the State 

 University of New York, Stony Brook, N.Y. 



'Marine Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 

 NY 11794. 



do not check carefully afterward. This raises doubts about the 

 scientific accuracy and quality of many papers. The most distress- 

 ing thing, however, was the enormous amount of time wasted by 

 the authors of this bibliography, and by librarians locally and 

 across the country, trying to verify and locate inaccurate 

 references. Some we never found, and are not sure that they exist. 



We are not certain that we have eliminated errors of this kind, 

 but hope they are at a minimum. We have tried to maintain a 

 high level of accuracy, but there are many opportunities to com- 

 mit slips even in the best of circumstances. 



To save time in preparation we have chosen to omit diacritical 

 marks. This will be obvious when papers are in French, not so ob- 

 vious elsewhere. We hope that this will not cause undue trouble. 



There are several underlying themes in the clam literature. Of 

 prime importance are papers describing life history and ecology of 

 the hard clam, that is, describing its role in nature and how it 

 copes with the many threats to continued existence. Other papers 

 use the hard clam as a convenient tool in pharmacology or deal 

 with its antiviral or anticancer properties. Still others are concern- 

 ed with special powers of particular organs such as "catch muscle" 

 and what makes it work, or the crystalline style and its role in the 

 organism. We hope the fairly complete index will be helpful in 

 segregating and recombining these diverse themes in various 

 ways. It is planned to make this even more useful by preparing 

 separately two additional documents, a technical review of the 

 knowledge accumulated, and a more popular account intended 

 for enforcement officers, hatchery workers, and the industry 

 generally. 



About 80 papers are listed in the index only by title. Most of 

 these contained nothing on Mercenaria, but this could not be 

 detected by reading the titles. About 20 of these could not be 

 located and therefore we could not tell whether Mercenaria was 

 mentioned or not. After entry 850, all titles were annotated. 



Bibliographies are out of date before they are printed, because 

 papers keep coming out. Probably the most important omission at 

 this time is the paper by Michael Castagna and John N. Kraeuter, 

 entitled "Manual for growing the hard clam Mercenaria," publish- 

 ed in 1981 as Special Report in Applied Marine Science and 

 Ocean Engineering No. 249 by the Virginia Institute of Marine 

 Science, Gloucester Point, Va. We hope this bibliography will 

 help by saving time in hunting for past literature, some of which is 

 difficult to find. 



We hired Donna Terrett to type the bibliography and the index. 

 This was fortunate, because she had uninterrupted time to spend 

 on it full time and took an interest in the work and its accuracy, 

 which added much to the appearance of the finished product. 

 Whatever faults remain are solely the responsibility of the senior 

 author. 



Paul Flagg spent the summer 1977 preparing a partial index to 

 the bibliography. 



