Titre :	British prosobranch molluscs : their functional anatomy and ecology
Type de document :	texte imprimé
Auteurs :	Fretter, Vera, Auteur
Editeur :	Ray society
Année de publication :	1962
Importance :	755 p.
Format :	26 cm.
Langues :	Anglais (eng)
Index. décimale :	594 Mollusques
Résumé :	In the nineteenth century there appeared three accounts of British Molluscs which have been the standard works of reference for students of these animals ever since. They were Alder & Hancock's British Nudibranchiate Mollusca (1845-55), Forbes& Hanley's History of the British Mollusca, and their Shells (1848-53) and Jeffreys' British Conchology (1863-69). Great as is the debt which all malacologists and conchologists owe to these authors, the fact remains that their severely systematic approach to their subject, their attitude to zoology and even their vocabulary and style are very different from their modern counterparts. The molluscs have, indeed, been shown to be excellent material for work on functional morphology and for demonstrating the adaptation of structure to function and of both to the ecological niche which the animals occupy, though they have proved less suitable for, and less productive of results in certain fields of physiology. The rich findings of this modern malacology have not as yet received any synthetic treatment, though Morton has made a brave attempt to indicate their main lines in his little book The Mollusca (1959). The whole molluscan field, however, is really too great to deal with except in such a brief way and we have, therefore, in preparing this attempt to present the results of all this work, limited ourselves to the pros branch gastropods, the group with which we are most familiar, and which, to our thinking, shows the interrelationships of structure and function and habitat in more varied and convincing ways than any other. We have not set out to write a systematic account nor one which will permit the identification of specimens collected in the field, believing that this was a ground already adequately covered by others and one, to tell the truth, in which we were less interested than in that of functional morphology, where, too, the need for synthesis is greater. We have, however, included a list of British prosobranchs with some indication of their precise habitat and present distribution and a reference which will permit those who are interested to refer to Forbes & Hanley's or Jeffrey's works for fuller descriptions of shell and external features. These two works will, indeed, long live on for such use because of the excellence of their descriptive text and figures. We have written our account primarily on the basis of work done on those prosobranchs which live in Britain and the British seas, but when it has seemed necessary or desirable to refer to animals which are not found in these localities in order to increase the value of a discussion, we have not hesitated to do so. Whilst the text rests largely on published work much of what is included without reference to an author is new material from our unpublished investigations. Although the writing of the book was naturally started by each author undertaking the sections which his interests and experience rendered most apt, each of us has read and reread the other's writing, and the result is (and is intended to be) a genuinely joint effort; both of us are therefore equally responsible for the shortcomings, whether of fact, style or treatment, which the discriminating reader will inevitably discover.

British prosobranch molluscs : their functional anatomy and ecology [texte imprimé] / Fretter, Vera, Auteur . - Ray society, 1962 . - 755 p. ; 26 cm.
Langues : Anglais (eng)

Index. décimale :

594 Mollusques

Résumé :

In the nineteenth century there appeared three accounts of British Molluscs which have been the standard works of reference for students of these animals ever since. They were Alder & Hancock's British Nudibranchiate Mollusca (1845-55), Forbes& Hanley's History of the British Mollusca, and their Shells (1848-53) and Jeffreys' British Conchology (1863-69). Great as is the debt which all malacologists and conchologists owe to these authors, the fact remains that their severely systematic approach to their subject, their attitude to zoology and even their vocabulary and style are very different from their modern counterparts. The molluscs have, indeed, been shown to be excellent material for work on functional morphology and for demonstrating the adaptation of structure to function and of both to the ecological niche which the animals occupy, though they have proved less suitable for, and less productive of results in certain fields of physiology. The rich findings of this modern malacology have not as yet received any synthetic treatment, though Morton has made a brave attempt to indicate their main lines in his little book The Mollusca (1959). The whole molluscan field, however, is really too great to deal with except in such a brief way and we have, therefore, in preparing this attempt to present the results of all this work, limited ourselves to the pros branch gastropods, the group with which we are most familiar, and which, to our thinking, shows the interrelationships of structure and function and habitat in more varied and convincing ways than any other. We have not set out to write a systematic account nor one which will permit the identification of specimens collected in the field, believing that this was a ground already adequately covered by others and one, to tell the truth, in which we were less interested than in that of functional morphology, where, too, the need for synthesis is greater. We have, however, included a list of British prosobranchs with some indication of their precise habitat and present distribution and a reference which will permit those who are interested to refer to Forbes & Hanley's or Jeffrey's works for fuller descriptions of shell and external features. These two works will, indeed, long live on for such use because of the excellence of their descriptive text and figures. We have written our account primarily on the basis of work done on those prosobranchs which live in Britain and the British seas, but when it has seemed necessary or desirable to refer to animals which are not found in these localities in order to increase the value of a discussion, we have not hesitated to do so. Whilst the text rests largely on published work much of what is included without reference to an author is new material from our unpublished investigations. Although the writing of the book was naturally started by each author undertaking the sections which his interests and experience rendered most apt, each of us has read and reread the other's writing, and the result is (and is intended to be) a genuinely joint effort; both of us are therefore equally responsible for the shortcomings, whether of fact, style or treatment, which the discriminating reader will inevitably discover.