Inventaire National du Patrimoine Naturel

Authors
Ian Killeen
Issue
16
Page
23

Olivier Gargominy of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris has asked me to place this request in Mollusc World for records of nonmarine molluscs from France. The Inventaire National du Patrimoine Naturel (INPN) is collecting and synthesising all data on the fauna and flora of France. There is an extremely good website (http://inpn.mnhn.fr), mostly in French but with some introductory sections in English.

Many of the Society’s members will have recorded and collected molluscs in France and the INPN would be very pleased to receive your records. As much accompanying data as you have should be sent with the records: date, site, habitat and so on. When giving Grid References be careful to state which system they are as French IGN maps have several different grid systems on them. There are considerably more species of terrestrial molluscs than given in Kerney & Cameron (1979) and a large number of freshwater species. The most recent checklist by Falkner, Ripken & Falkner (2002) lists 660 species and 747 species and subspecies. Therefore, some determinations may need to take into account recent revisions of the fauna.

I am happy to receive any records and pass them on, or you can send them directly to:* Olivier GARGOMINY, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Département Ecologie et gestion de la biodiversité, Service du Patrimoine naturel, 61, rue Buffon, 75005 PARIS, France