New Article by tintenfisch

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Over the course of a year, TONMO.com staff member Kat Bolstad (tintenfisch) visited 10 natural history museums in 7 countries. She has been so kind as to share her experience with us in words and photos, in this newly added article titled, "I Belong in a Museum".

Thanks very much Kat for your contribution to our community! It's great when we can be eyes and ears for each other and share our experiences with our fellow ceph-heads.

:notworth:
 
The French entrance makes me worry that they were concerned about what might walk OUT of one of those jars :tomato:

Kat, when you mention finding twice the diversity in the single species can you unscientifically elaborate a little on what kinds of differences you found?
 
An odyssey only a few "quirky" people could truely understand Kat.

I am acutely aware of the decline of Natural History staff in museums and the effect it will have on taxonomy over the next few decades, its a big concern. Even worse specialist taxonomists are slowly being replaced by generalist parataxonomists. I wonder what will happen to the less charismatic animals, worms etc.

Thanks though K. Your trip puts things in perspective.

M
 
dwhatley;130636 said:
Kat, when you mention finding twice the diversity in the single species can you unscientifically elaborate a little on what kinds of differences you found?

Sure. My thesis described 26 species of onychoteuthid, which is about 12 more than most recent accounts have listed in this family. I included species that other authors (Nesis 1987, Kubodera et al. 1998, Young et al. 2003) did not list for a variety of reasons:

Original description not sufficient to diagnose species and/or type material previously believed lost, but re-examined in this study:

Onychoteuthis bergii
Onychoteuthis aequimanus
Onychoteuthis mollis

Onykia (Onykia) aequatorialis
Onykia
(Onykia) indica

New species:

Onychoteuthis lacrima Bolstad & Seki in Bolstad, 2008
Onychoteuthis prolata Bolstad, Vecchione & Young in Bolstad, 2008
Notonykia nesisi Bolstad, 2007
Kondakovia nigmatullini Laptikhovsky, Arkhipkin & Bolstad, 2008 (not described in thesis, but mentioned; now published)

Possible new species (appear different from type species in genus, but each based on a single specimen, at different life stages):

Gen. nov. 2 (?=Walvisteuthis; see Young et al. 2003) spp. 1, 2, and 3

... because some of these species are still based on limited material (some only one specimen, in fact), from various life stages, it is still likely that some of these will turn out to be synonyms - younger names for an earlier described species. However, based on the present material, I have accepted them because each is distinct from all other known species at life stages where comparison is possible.

Does that help? :bugout:
 

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