1) Attending: Rob Dillon (chair), Amy Wethington (sec.), Ken Brown, Tamara Anderson, Jayne Brim Box, Janet Butler, Betty Crump, Ryan Evans, Jeff Garner, Paul Hartfield, Marilyn Hemker, Mark Hove, Paul Johnson, Jacquie Lee, Russ Minton, Malcolm Pierson, Dusty Proctor, Doug Smith, Brian Watson, Charles Watson, Tom Watters, Jeri Wood.
2) Administrative matters - Rob Dillon was nominated and elected as committee chairperson and Ken Brown was appointed as co-chairperson.
3) National Strategy for Gastropod Conservation - Paul Johnson described the progress to date on the national strategy for freshwater gastropod conservation. The strategy will incorporate a series of papers given at the Chattanooga meeting, along with a conservation strategy authored and edited by the presenters. Paul hopes to have the strategy finished soon, and plans a presentation and discussion group at the AMS meetings in Charleston in 2002. Paul noted that the strategy will be loosely based on similar strategy papers developed for freshwater fish and mussels, but will be more concise. Rob Dillon encouraged everyone to attend the AMS meetings in Charleston on August 3 - 7, 2002. Lodging will be available at $85 in hotels, or at $20-25 in the dorms. Palmetto bugs will be provided free of charge.
4) Freshwater Gastropods of North America Project
- Rob Dillon summarized the status of this project, and the NSF grant proposal
written to fund it. The project, initiated in 1998, is designed in
three phases. The first phase involves an inventory of the gastropod
lots at the 10 major North American museums, that have approximately 90%
of our snail holdings. The NSF proposal involves ten co-PI's, each
of whom will have specific responsibilities for museum work. The
data will be entered into an electronic data base, a demo of which is available
at Rob's College of Charleston web site. Data fields will include
precise localities, etc. The proposal also includes the building
of a national reference collection including lots from all described species
in North America. This collection may be housed at the USFWS National
Conservation and Training Center in Sheperdstown. The reference collection
will prove valuable to investigators as well as providing a way to check
the validity of lots in existing museum collections. If the proposal
is not funded, Paul Johnson suggested a workshop at the AMS meetings involving
a large group of malacologists to re-design the proposal, and a professional
mediator to help arbitrate the changes so that future proposals would have
higher chances of success. Paul Hartfield pointed out that there
is still a lot of disagreement about proper classification, especially
in groups like the pleurocerids.
Phase II of the project will involve an extensive
field survey that will emphasize geographic regions that are not well covered
in museums, or where losses in diversity have occurred. A renewal
from NSF will also fund this work, with a group of co-PI's responsible
for specific geographic regions, and using subcontractors or students to
do most of the field work. Doug Smith pointed out that a specific
protocol is needed for collections. Tissues cannot be preserved in
formalin if DNA work will be necessary, etc. Paul Johnson requested
that Doug develop such a protocol, and Doug agreed. Doug will forward
the protocol to Paul or Rob, and requests suggestions as to the specifics
that different workers (e.g., anatomists, biochemists) will need.
Rob will send material from a book by Charles Sturm on collecting snails
to Doug. Proper field notes with precise location, habitat type, abundance,
size distribution, etc. will also be necessary. A workshop for proper
collection and preservation methods would be a good idea for the next AMS
meetings.
Phase III of the project will be a monograph for
all North American species. The monograph will have several pages per species
with descriptions, range maps and recommendations for conservation.
The monograph will also be in an online version eventually. Jayne
Brim Box noted she is building a data base of snails in western states
and provided some data on diversity in each state. It was also suggested
that we use school children to help collect data, or use collections or
databases compiled by state agencies. Benefits would involve harvesting
a lot of information at a relatively small price, although concerns were
voiced about how to standardize such collections, or make sure voucher
specimens were available. Participants were urged to contact Rob
Dillon if they have additional suggestions for the project.
5) The meeting was adjourned.