A few years ago I wrote an article for the Conchologists’ Newsletter on ‘lumping’ in the Lymnaeidae. Out of this arose a study with Ron Carr which recognised Lymnaea (Stagnicola) fusca and L. palustris as distinct taxa, both of which occurred in Britain and Ireland. In 2002 Ron had recognised Cernuella aginnica as occurring in Britain. Then in 2004 Roy Anderson described Arion occultus as a new species of slug, and also in 2004 Killeen et al. recognised Sphaerium nucleus as part of our fauna. Whilst the Society has embraced the new nomenclature published by Anderson in 2005, there appears to be a reluctance to either search for or separate these recently recognised species. In this issue of Mollusc World, Ron Carr observes “Since the separation of the two British species (of Lymnaea), provision of additional distributional data for either species has attracted little interest from recorders. Recently published records often still refer to “L. palustris agg”, the few specimens supplied for anatomical examination have being mainly submitted by nonmalacologists”. I can report that I have only received one enquiry from a member concerning the Sphaerium species. Therefore I have written an article which I hope will stimulate some interest.
In Mollusc World 15, we featured the work of Joaquim Reis who was awarded the Society’s prize for best poster with a conservation theme at last year’s World Congress of Malacology in Antwerp. In this issue we have reproduced Joaquim’s prize winning poster on Unio tumidiformis (see page 8). Finally, could I just remind everyone that all articles for Mollusc World and all correspondence concerning articles must in the first instance be sent to me and not sent directly to the designer (Emma Pitrakou). There have been occasions when articles had been sent directly to Emma and my first knowledge of them was when I received the proofs for checking! Emma is an excellent designer and the attractive product we have today is due to her skill and imagination. It is not at all fair to expect her to do the job of forwarding articles to me for editing!