![]() Sloane began an intense study of Jamaican plants and other biota. In 1687 he sailed to Jamaica on board the HMS Assistance as physician to Christopher Monck, the 2nd Duke of Albemarle, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. He was Royal Physician to King George II, President of the Royal Society (succeeding that slacker Sir Isaac Newton), and President of the Royal Society of Physicians. Sloane was the first physician in English history to be awarded a hereditary title. He named the shell after his Irish fellow physician Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronette (1660-1753) (left). The species was named in 1861 by Robert James Shuttleworth (1810-1874), an English physician, botanist, and shell enthusiast. The aperture (the opening to the shell) is armed with “teeth” – shelly constructions that presumably defend the snail from some predators. Unlike many Jamaican snails, this species is quite common and widespread on much of the island. It is a land and occasionally a tree snail hailing from Jamaica. Originally included in the far flung family Camaenidae, it is now in the New World family Pleurodontidae. 30 mm) in a family full of goodly-sized and above species. Pleurodonte sloaneana (Shuttleworth, 1861) All our fancy “book lernin” was no match for the real experts, the young naturalists of Polo. The kids knew exactly where to find them, probably seeing them on a daily basis. I now have potential DNA from this obviously seldom seen snail for comparative work on the family. Less than a half-hour later we returned to find that an entire village had been enlisted and the kids had, probably without breaking a sweat, found 50. We decided to head uphill for metropolitan Polo and promised to recompense them on the way back down. Rather embarrassingly, within minutes they had found two. Two young gentlemen happened by and we “hired” them to help look. We began looking in a roadside cut and after a long, hot, scorpion-filled, goat-laden, cacti-infested, steamy length of time we had found exactly – none. Polo can only be reached by a dirt road that winds up the mountain and then dead-ends at the village. With my trusty colleagues we made a detour to downtown Polo. This group of land snails, the Annulariidae, is of great interest to me, and as luck would have it, I was going to the DR in June. It was not seen again for 91 years, when a collector found two specimens, after hours of looking, near the namesake village. The snail was named in 1946 Kisslingia poloensis by Paul Bartsch, the expert on the group at the time. Abbott collected a fragment of a land snail shell in the far-flung mountains of the Dominican Republic (DR) at a remote place called Polo*. Tagged jamaica muricidae Leave a comment The Kids are Alright (Mollusc of the Month) Posted by George Watters at 9:42am August 25, 2015 Here is the sign his townspeople erected to him. I visited his hometown of Sherwood Content in the hinterlands of Jamaica in 2013. Jamaica has another rarity, in human form – Usain Bolt, who has the true distinction of being the fastest human alive, running at roughly Warp Factor 8 (“The legs canna take it, Captain!”). Only a handful of specimens are known, all from moderately deep water, and most from a single stretch of coastline on northern Jamaica. The dye has been in production since at least 1750 BC.īut it is unlikely Chicoreus cosmani will ever become a pest or be found in sufficient numbers to be used for dyes. From certain species is extracted the Royal Tyrian Purple dye, so costly to make that it became the hallmark of only the very rich and powerful – Caesars and Popes – and is still today the “official” color of the Catholic Church. Most are carnivores on other molluscs and barnacles and can become serious pests of commercial oyster, mussel, and clam beds. They are favorites of collectors with rare species selling for thousands of dollars. ![]() This beautiful mollusc is a member of the large family of marine snails known as the Muricidae, for my money the most exquisite group of all seashells. The shell is Chicoreus cosmani Abbott & Finlay, 1979. This month features two of Jamaica’s best – a shell and an athlete, both genuine rarities. ![]()
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