Field guide to the common marine molluscs of India

Mohan Joseph, M (2007) Field guide to the common marine molluscs of India. CMFRI, Cochin. ISBN 978-81-901219-5-8

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Book
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Marine mollucs; identification; field guide
Subjects:	Molluscan Fisheries CMFRI Books
Divisions:	CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division Subject Area > CMFRI > CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division Subject Area > CMFRI-Kochi > Marine Capture > Molluscan Fisheries Division
Depositing User:	Users 5 not found.
Date Deposited:	10 Mar 2010 06:53
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2016 07:43
URI:	http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/id/eprint/69

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