Nomenclature
The nomenclature of the British bivalves was rather stable throughout most of the twentieth century largely due to the rather isolated approach used, which ignored the fact that the British region is part of the larger North-east Atlantic marine province. The nomenclature used during this time (including that found in Tebble) came primarily from Winckworth’s 1932 paper1; “The British Marine Mollusca”. This was partially updated in two papers2 by Bowden and Heppell in 1966 and 1968, both on bivalves but not comprehensive. Major changes appeared in the last decade of the 20th century, firstly with the publication in 1991 of Smith & Heppell’s “Checklist of British Mollusca”3, which, in 1997, was largely incoporated into the “Species Directory of the Marine Fauna and Flora of the British Isles and Surrounding Seas”4 edited by Howson & Picton.
CLEMAM or the “Checklist of European and Mediterranean Marine Mollusca” – a contemporary, but web-based, development – first went online in 1995 and formed the basis for the EC funded European Register of Marine Species ERMS that went online in 1997. The ERMS dataset is used and combined with others to form the “World Register of Marine Species” WoRMS http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php. The CLEMAM site http://www.somali.asso.fr/clemam contains full synonymy and references and is our preferred source of nomenclatural reference. Both CLEMAM and WoRMS are updated and now differ from Smith & Heppell and the “Species Directory” greatly.
Here we mostly follow CLEMAM but with some reservations.
Where nomenclatural changes follow peer-reviewed taxonomic revisions, we have accepted these. Where the use of subgenera and genera has been subjective and where the synonymy of species has not been supported by published research we may take a more conservative approach. Where we do deviate from CLEMAM and/or WoRMS we will support this by taxonomic research and explain this in the ‘Notes on Nomenclature’ section of the species account.
In order to give some continuity we also give the names in both Smith & Heppell and Tebble. We do not give the full synonymy listings for each species as these can be found on the CLEMAM website.
1 Winckworth, R. 1932. The British Marine Mollusca. Journal of Conchology 19 (7): 211-252
2 Bowden J & Heppell, D. 1966. Revised list of British Mollusca 1. Introduction; Nuculacea – Ostracea. Journal of Conchology 26: 99-124 / 1968. 2. Unionacea – Cardiacea. 26: 237-272.
3 Smith S. & Heppell, D. 1991. Checklist of British Marine Mollusca. National Museums of Scotland Information Series, No 11: 114pp.
4 Heppell, D., Smith, S. & Picton, B. E. 1997. Mollusca In Howson, C. M. & Picton, B. E. eds. The species directory of the marine fauna and flora of the British Isles and surrounding seas. Ulster Museum and The Marine Conservation Society. Pp 229-268.