Page 6 - Land Snails of New Mexico

PREFACE
The development of this collection of reports on land snails has been somewhat circuitousbecausenoneoftheauthorsactuallybegantheircareersasmalacologists. Artie Metcalf began as an ichthyologist, turning to the study of land snails only after leaving easternKansastotakeateachingpositionattheUniversityofTexasatElPaso. Fossil snails and Pleistocene sediments drew his attention in the early 1960s, and his interests broadenedtoincludemodernsnailfaunastouseascomparisonswithpaleofaunas. A graduate student, T i m Dillon, took an interest in ecological relationships a m o n g snails, elevation,andvegetation,whichledtohiscontributiontothisBulletin. Iwastrainedas avertebratepaleontologistwithafocusonPleistocenemicrofaunas. Manyyearsago,I began working with Artie to compare assemblages of fossil rodents and their paleoecologicalimplicationswithassemblagesoffossilsnailsfromthesamesites. This w a s done to test the reliability of predictions concerning past environments from two independentsources(rodentsandsnails). Asthisprocessevolved,itbecamemoreand morenecessarytocollectfaunasoflivesnailsfromaroundNew Mexicoinordertomore accuratelyreconstructpaleoenvironmentsandvegetation. Asaresult,alargecollection was assembledovertheyears,includingacompletedatabaseatthismuseum.
Several years ago, after receiving an increasing number of requests from resource
managers and other academicians for use of the snail data, w e considered developing a
BulletintosummarizeourworkonNewMexico’slandsnails. Themajorityofthe
collectinghadresultedfromArtieMetcalf'sefforts. Iwasabletoobtainprivatefunding
andsupportfromtheNew MexicoDepartmentofGame andFishtomake collectionsfrom those localities around the state that had not been covered in our earlier efforts. Also
instrumental in pushing this project to a published Bulletin were the encouragement and financialresourcesofJacquenetteC.Ostheimer,who made severalgenerousdonationson behalfofherselfandherlatehusband,AlfredJ.Ostheimer. Ms.Ostheimeralsodonated alargemalacologicalcollectiontotheMuseum, andestablishedanendowmenttosupport and expand the collection. W e are indebted to Ms. Ostheimer for her support of malacologicalstudiesatthismuseum. Ithink,however,thatwemightneverhave completed the manuscript without the tremendous efforts of Pauline Ungnade, an experiencededitorandvolunteerattheMuseum. Herenthusiasmandhardworkkeptus
ontrackuntilthedayweturnedthemanuscriptovertotheNMMNHS Bulletineditorial staff, which worked diligently to get the manuscript into camera-ready format.
Although thisBulletin isintended primarily for a more academic audience,we hope thatitwillmeettheneedsofafarwideraudience. Inparticular,we trustthatitwillprove useful to resource managers and those members of the general public with an interest in identifying and learning more about land snails.
Richard A. Smartt
Albuquerque July, 1997
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