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Field guide to the common marine molluscs of India

CMFRI Repository

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Field Value
 
Relation http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/69/
 
Title Field guide to the common marine molluscs of India
 
Creator Mohan Joseph, M
 
Subject Molluscan Fisheries
CMFRI Books
 
Description Sea shells have been a fascinating item for
humans. Anybody visiting the beach would pick
up a few beautiful seashells washed ashore and
keep them as mementos. There are ardent collectors
of seashells where collectors’ items of rare seashells
are prized several thousands of dollars a piece.
There are many exhaustive taxonomic accounts
of seashells of the world. However in India, the
lack of a handy guide for identification of local
species has been a major lacuna in field studies.
Since the Phylum Mollusca has many Classes of
diverse animals, there has been no specialist who
could venture in to preparation of an updated
exhaustive taxonomic account of the whole Phylum.
Taxonomy of Class such as Bivalvia is rather difficult
and therefore often left unattended. The lack of a
cursory identification guide for preliminary field
identification of the common marine molluscs of
India has been long felt by field workers. The
present hand book aims at addressing this need.
I have been an ardent collector of marine
molluscs for over four decades from various sites
in India. It has taken several years of my time and
energy to identify these molluscs and make Indian
ink drawings directly from the specimens which
numbered over one thousand. I have selected 378
most common species from my collection to be
included in this field hand book which has been
designed in a format which would help any field
worker in the preliminary identification of the
specimen collected from the distinct taxonomic
features available from the drawings. I am fully
aware of the limitations of this hand book.
Therefore, I would not claim this as a tool for the
correct identification of the species. Such
identification would necessarily require detailed
study of the taxonomic features and comparison
with the taxonomic accounts from literature. I am
also aware of the possible errors in the taxonomic
nomenclature of many species which would
certainly require updating. Therefore, I may warn
the users against using this field guide for the final
taxonomic identification of the species listed here.
I am grateful to my colleague Dr. Rekha Nair who
took pains to check many species names with OBIS
and FAO lists and updated the scientific names.
The handbook is meant as a field guide and
therefore the size is designed to fit the pocket of
the field worker. Space is also provided for field
notes. I hope that this humble effort will find use
by field workers and stimulate the interest in the
taxonomy of marine molluscs of the Indian coasts
and result in many more useful outputs.
 
Publisher CMFRI
 
Date 2007
 
Type Book
PeerReviewed
 
Format text
 
Language en
 
Identifier http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/69/1/Field_guide.pdf
Mohan Joseph, M (2007) Field guide to the common marine molluscs of India. CMFRI, Cochin. ISBN 978-81-901219-5-8