October, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 6 
Those with a taste for a particular beverage can 
also bring that for their own consumption. 
Contact Vice-President Leslie Harris 
t< Hiharris@ bcf.usc.edu>] to coordinate 
dishes; although chili-mac is very tasty, 20 
different editions is not a good thing. This is a 
Members Only event [non-member www 
readers - sorry], but family and a limited 
number of guests are welcome. 
We will try to arrange for Santa to be in 
attendance for the kids. This has usually been 
the case in the past. The combination of season, 
location, occasion, and congenial friends 
should once again guarantee a memorable 
experience. If Saturday, the 11 th of December, 
is an option for you, please plan to attend. Let 
Leslie know how many will be in your party, 
and how many kids are involved. Festivities 
will start at 6 p.m. and continue till the 
museum staffer who will be assisting us says it 
is time to close the doors. As in past years 
arrangements will be made to have the Gift 
Shop open for our perusal and topical 
Christmas shopping. Bring a list and find some 
unique items for friends and family. This is our 
last party before 2000, so let’s all get together 
for a big one. Hope you can make it! 
FIRST ONE OF THE NEXT 
SCUM, Southern California United 
Malacologists, will be holding their 4 th Annual 
Meeting on 15 January 2000 at the IGPP 
Building at Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography in La Jolla. With the flurry of 
year-end activities this year we need to mark 
our calendars early so that we won’t forget to 
attend this get-together. It’s a great opportunity 
to meet and mingle with others interested in 
and studying mollusks in our area. Attend if 
you can, you’ll enjoy yourself and make new 
contacts. Larry Lovell ( llovell@ucsd.edu ) 
can provide more information. He will be 
assisting in his capacity as Curator of the SIO 
Invertebrate Collections. 
NEW LITERATURE 
Further evidence of the relationship of the 
Porifera to other metazoan phyla was provided 
by Watkins & Beckenbach (1999) using a 2550 
base pair sequence from the mitochondrial 
genome. They found a surprising level of 
correspondence between the genome of the 
sequenced sponge, Tetilla sp (T. spinosa/ 
villosa) and that of Metridium senile. This 
would seem to make the positioning of the 
Porifera in a separate and distinct subkingdom 
as recommended by Willmer (1990) 
inadvisable. 
Hox genes provide evidence to help resolve 
some of the earliest divergences of the major 
phyla. As reported by de Rosa et al (1999), 
their recent sequencing of Hox genes from a 
priapulid and a brachiopod lend support to the 
tripartite division of the Bilateria into 
Deuterostomia, Ecdysiozoa, and 
Lophotrochozoa. Hox complement seems well 
suited to recording this high level divergence, 
which is believed to have taken place prior to 
the formation of the major “crown” phyla 
before or at the beginning of the Cambrian. 
The Hox data match the phylum positioning of 
Halanych et al (1995), based on 18S ribosomal 
DNA analyses, and place the Brachiopoda 
firmly among the Lophotrochozoa, and not in 
the more traditional deuterostome position. 
Phylogeny within the holothurians was 
investigated by Kerr & Kim (1999). Their 
results, based both on molecular data and on 
morphological evaluation, suggest that the 
current organization within the class is 
incorrect. The authors do not present an 
explicit hierarchy differing from that currently 
accepted, but do present the data which causes 
them to think that arrangement faulty. Their 
reticence is based on a degree of incongruence 
between the molecular and morphological data¬ 
sets. Hopefully the discrepancies can be 
resolved, and a clear and more correct 
hierarchy subsequently proposed either by 
these or other authors . They also consider the 
2 
