November, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 7 
Also examined at the meeting were specimens 
of Haminaea. These animals were juveniles 
and so we bleached out the gizzard plates to be 
sure we weren’t confusing them with small 
Bulla. They were identified by Don to be 
Haminaea virescens. Other interesting (at least 
to those of us who normally work on off-shore 
material) animals which were in this sample 
but which were not taken to the meeting were a 
juvenile Lepidozona left at species due to its 
small size, a specimen of Tectura depicta (an 
eelgrass limpet) and a few Teinostoma 
supravallatum (a vitrinellid gastropod). 
Greg Williams and Janelle West (PERL) had 
brought molluscs as well as crustaceans to the 
meeting. They had a small Saxidomus nuttalli 
which as a juvenile looks very different from 
the adult. They also had specimens of 
Cumingia californica and Leporimetis obesa, 
species not normally seen by the SCAMIT 
members due to their shallow water bay and/or 
estuary occurrence. All in all, quite a few 
animals were identified during the course of 
the day and it was a successful, if slightly 
hectic, meeting. 
UPCOMING MEETING 
The 72nd annual WEFTEC Conference and 
Exposition will be held in New Orleans, 
Louisiana from October 9-13, 2000. For any 
and all interested in wastewater treatment and 
water quality this is the one not to miss. More 
information can be found at: 
http://www.wef.org 
STATEMENT OF POSITION 
The following concerns year of publication 
usage in SCAMIT Ed. 4 for taxa described by 
Philip Pearsall Carpenter. 
While examining the second edition of the AFS 
Common and Scientific Names of Aquatic 
Invertebrates from the United States and 
Canada: Mollusks (Turgeon et al 1998) it 
became apparent that there were many 
differences of opinion concerning the correct 
year of publication for Carpenter taxa. The 
Edition 2 list was modified to reflect usages in 
the volumes of the Taxonomic Atlas of the 
Santa Maria Basin and Western Santa Barbara 
Channel, and these changes were implemented 
in Edition 3. The AFS list was being compared 
with Edition 3 when it became clear something 
was amiss. Carpenter published a host of 
papers in the period 1864 to 1866, and just 
which are adequate to establish a given taxon is 
a matter of academic debate. Most of the taxa 
names were introduced in 1864 with brief 
indications rather than diagnoses. Fuller 
treatments of most species, including 
diagnoses, were given later in 1864 and in 
1865 and 1866. This original literature is very 
hard to come by, but fortunately a compendium 
reprint of most of the originals [including the 
B.A.A.S. report] was published by the 
Smithsonian Institution in 1872.1 have a copy 
of that document, so have been able to check 
both the original B.A.A.S. usage, and the 
subsequent diagnoses myself. I also have a 
copy of Palmer (1958) which covers 
establishment and use of Carpenter’s names, 
and provides photographs of the extant types. 
In all cases that I have checked Palmer’s 
reported date against the reprinted texts, they 
have been in perfect agreement. I view her 
report as thus being quite authoritative and 
error-free. 
The AFS list, in its introduction, states that 
particular care was taken with the 
nomenclature of the second edition, including 
authorship and date of publication. That this 
was undertaken with some thoroughness is 
indicated by the notes on changes from first 
edition usage, but a number of patent errors 
still slipped through. A list of publications was 
given (indicated by asterisk in the 
bibliography) from which new information on 
taxon authorship was obtained. None of these 
apply directly to P. P. Carpenter, and Palmer’s 
monographic treatment is not referenced. I 
have been impressed with the level and 
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