September, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 5 
Uneroded adults do, however, carry around 
their developmental history in their shells, and 
provide the necessary evidence to connect the 
juveniles and adults. 
Two more juvenile clams were brought forth, 
one turned out to be a very small Semele 
venusta and the other, a young Cumingia 
californica. All of these animals can, on 
occasion, be taken offshore if the sediment 
particle mix and organic load are appropriate, 
but are much more commonly found in bays, 
harbors, and estuaries. 
Tony Phillips (CLAEMD) brought three 
variant forms of Ophiodermella to be 
examined by Ron Velarde (CSDMWWD). 
After much examination and discussion it was 
decided that the three animals were tentatively 
all Ophiodermella inermis with slight 
variations in color and sculpture. These 
animals will be checked by Dr. James McLean 
at LACMNH. 
Megan Lilly (CSDMWWD) then brought forth 
the ugly question of Lirobittium. She had 
examples of various forms of the genus from 
different B’98 stations as well as the standard 
animal that the City of San Diego sees in its 
regular monitoring stations and calls 
Lirobittium larum. CSDLAC as well as 
Hyperion both call their common form 
Lirobittium rugatum There was some 
discussion as to standardizing the various lab 
approaches to this animal and no conclusion 
was reached. The animals brought by Megan 
were left at Lirobittium sp. for the time being. 
The question may be addressed at a later 
meeting on gastropods with Hank Chaney of 
the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. 
We have already considered species of 
Lirobittium at a previous meeting with Paul 
Scott at Santa Barbara, but without much 
consensus on the boundaries of the taxa we see. 
The afternoon started (and ended) with 
Crustacea. Dean Pasko (CSDMWWD) 
brought forth a strange little animal found in 
one of the Channel Islands samples. The 
animal was recognized by Don Cadien as being 
a harpactacoid copepod of the genus 
Scutellidium. The examined specimen had a 
metallic sheen to its carapace. 
Although we had intended to consider a 
number of taxa within the amphipod family 
Oedicerotidae, including several provisional 
forms erected by Dean Pasko from San Diego 
samples, we got stuck on the Synchelidium. 
The question of proper generic usage was 
raised again. Don Cadien referred to his earlier 
arguments for not adopting the genus 
Americhelidium as proposed by Bousfield and 
Chevrier (1996), but suggested that the 
correction indicated by Bousfield (1997) might 
be adequate to address the problems posed by 
the defective generotype selection. He 
informed us that the draft Catalogue of North 
American Aquatic Invertebrates was using 
Americhelidium , and that by the publication of 
the SCAMIT Ed. 4 listing, we might need to 
change our current position on the subject 
(rejection of Americhelidium ). 
This genus (whether we use Americhelidium or 
Synchelidium ) has always proved to be 
troublesome. Shoemaker grappled with it, and 
passed it off to J. L. Barnard prior to his death. 
Barnard struggled with it for quite awhile, 
parsing out the intertidal micropleon, and 
leaving behind manuscript names for three 
other species. None of us were willing to tackle 
the problem which would involve critical 
examination of a large body of material from 
the Allan Hancock collections identified as his 
manuscript species by J. L. Barnard. This is 
accessible, now being on the shelves of the 
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles 
County. Some desultory attempts were made 
but no real progress. Then Amphipacifica Vol. 
2 No. 2 arrived in May of 1996 and we had the 
Bousfield and Chevrier attempt to make sense 
of these animals. They retained the two Mills 
species - rectipalmum and shoemakeri, and 
added another four from the Eastern Pacific - 
millsi , pectinatum, setosum , and variabilum. 
The key they included did not deal well with 
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