Page 8 - Land Snails of New Mexico

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HomosapiensLinnaeus.Iftheauthor'snameisnotin parentheses, itindicates that the species is still in the genus in which it was described originally. If the author's name is in parentheses,itindicatesthatthespeciesisnow inadifferent genus.Theyearinwhich thespecieswas describedmay appear aftertheauthor'sname,asinthespeciesaccountshereafter.
Inrecentyears,somemalacologistshavefeltaneedtohave
common,English-languagenamesforthemolluscsoftheUnited States and Canada. The results of these efforts have been
assembledinapublication(Turgeon,1988,withaseconded.in prep.),inwhichcommonnameshavebeensoughtoutor invented.Torefertoinventingacommonnameissomethingof acontradiction,becausemostcommon namesevolveslowlyin alanguage.Despitetheavailabilityofalistofcommonnames, itappearsthatzoologistsstillmainlyusethescientificnameof land molluscs when discussing and writing about them, as herein. In the species accounts below common names are i n d i c a t e d w h e r e a v a i l a b l e i n t h e list o f T u r g e o n ( 1 9 8 8 ) .
EARLY COLLECTORS
OF NEW MEXICO LAND SNAILS
Yarrow(1875)reportedtwo speciesoflandsnailscollected inNew Mexicoin1874,inconnectionwiththeWheelerSurvey W e s t of the 100th Meridian: Vallonia perspectiva (as Patula), taken at San Ildefonso, and a succineid, listed as Succinea stretchiana Bland, from Tierra Amarilla. This appears to be the firstpublishedreferencetoNew Mexicolandsnails.
It has been supposed that a Dr. G. M. Levette collected snails in the vicinity of Santa Fe prior to 1880 (Ewan, 1950:250), but this may not be the case. Shells acquired from Levette by Thomas Bland were described by Bland as Helix
levettei. Bland thought they were from the Santa Fe area. Later, it was ascertained that H. levettei was from the Huachuca
Mountains of Arizona, instead. In the meantime, C. F. Ancey (1887) had described a variety of Helix levettei from Santa Fe Canyon, which he named thomsoniana. With the transfer of the type locality of H. levettei from Santa Fe to the Huachucas, the name thomsoniana was retained and elevated to species rank to apply to the "real" Santa Fe area snail, which in 1899 had been placed in the genus Ashmunella. By these rather convoluted circumstances, Ashmunella thomsoniana seems to have acquiredthehonorofbeingtheearliest New Mexico landsnail to be described--in 1887.
Next, in 1892 and 1893, Edgar Alexander Mearns, a physician and naturalist with the Mexican Boundary Survey, made biologicalcollectionsalongthesouthernborderofNew Mexico. H e mentioned (1907:83,85) collecting "land shells" at only two localities in N e w Mexico: the Carrizalillo Mountains inApril1892andBigHatchetPeakinMay 1892.Fromthe CarrizalilloMountains,apparentlyonlySonorellahachitana was collected (Pilsbry:1939:274). Pilsbry (1915:324) discussed theascentofBigHatchetPeakbyMearns.On thistrip,Mearns collectedattwo localities,finding7 species,asinterpretedby Pilsbry, including the types of several species subsequently described by William H. Dall. These species were described in the mid-1890s and are the earliest land-snail species described
withtypelocalityinNewMexicoexceptforA.thomsoniana, mentioned above.
In 1893, Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, a British naturalist with a wide range of interests, arrived in Las Cruces where he was associatedwith theyoung agriculturalcollegeforthenext sevenyears.Subsequently,hespentthreeyearsatNew Mexico NormalUniversity,LasVegas,toroundout"hisNew Mexican decade,"astermedbyEwan (1950:109).Duringthisten-year period, Cockerell collected snails from various parts of N e w Mexico.HisearliestNew Mexicopaper,publishedin1894, reportedtheslugDeroceraslaeve(asAgriolimaxcampestris) from SantaFe,noting"SofarasIknow,thisisthefirstslug recorded from New Mexico." Between 1898 and 1905 he describedseveralnewtaxaoflandsnailsfromNewMexico, eitherassoleorjointauthor.Some ofhisdescriptionswere coauthored with Henry A. Pilsbry and in one paper (see Cockerell, 1899) he collaborated with Edward H. Ashmun to n a m e a n e w s u b s p e c i e s ( c a p i t a n e n s i s ) o f t h e s p e c i e s P o l y g y r a (later Ashmunella) pseudodonta from the Capitan Mountains. Cockerell apparently had several encounters with the Rev. E. H. Ashmun. H e discussed two of these in a paper of reminiscences on "snails and slugs" (Cockerell, 1936:210):
OnenightIhappenedtobeinAlbuquerque,andwas
looking for a place where a meeting was to be held. I
accosted a stranger, asking the way. W e were going to
the same place, and walked together. Thus I met the Rev.
E. H. Ashmun, the only other student of snails at that timeresidentinNew Mexico.ThenexttimeIsawhim
wasonatrain,andheatoncesaid"Ihavefoundsome new Polygyra"--thisbeingagenusofsnailscommon in the Eastern states. But we later found, on dissecting them, that they were not Polygyra at all, but a very d i s t i n c t g e n u s s i m u l a t i n g it. P i l s b r y a n d I w r o t e a p a p e r , describing the genus under the name Ashmunella. It provestobequiterichinspeciesinNewMexicoand Arizona, but has not been found elsewhere. AccordingtoJohnson(1905:121),Ashmun wasanativeof
Ohio, he had attended Yale Divinity School. and was a minister of the Congregational Church. Ashmun's ministry was in the West, where he resided in several states. He was "Home
MissionarySuperintendentofArizonaandNew Mexico"for6
years in the 1890s. A s h m u n himself discusses his malacological
interestsinapaper,"CollectinginArizonaandNew Mexico,"
published in The Nautilus in 1899. Although limited in scope,
this is the first paper to attempt a general view of the southwesternland-snailfauna.Heobservedthatmostlandsnails
were to be found in forests of the higher mountains in N e w
Mexico and discussed some of his collecting trips into these
mountains. He was an early advocate of collecting plant litter
and soil to inspect, at one's leisure, for small snails: "I usually
haveafloursackinmypocketforthepurpose."(p.14).He listed15taxathathadbeennamedfrommaterialshecollected
in Arizona and N e w Mexico. These included Bifidaria ashmuni and five taxa of Ashmunella, this genus of southwestern polygyridhaving been named in Ashmun's honor by Pilsbry and Cockerell in 1899. M o s t of the n e w taxa discovered by A s h m u n were named formally by Victor Sterki, William H. Dall, and Pilsbry.
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