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The molluscan class Scaphopoda, commonly called tusk or tooth shells, consists of a relatively poorly known group of infaunal predators. Scaphopods are rarely found in estuaries and most inhabit sands or sandy muds from the mid continental shelf through the deep sea. Because of this distribution and their lack of commercial importance , virtually nothing is known about their population dynamics, and even broad scale distributions are based on relatively few records. In many species, one or two animals may be collected at one site, and the next individuals may be at a site tens of kilometers away. Exactly how such widely dispersed, low abundance organisms reproduce is not readily apparent. No new species have been reported in the study area for many years, but the upper level taxonomy continues to evolve, and what were subgenera a few decades ago have been elevated to generic status, and even the familial level taxa are in flux. The last significant effort to depict the distribution of scaphopods in the Gulf of Mexico was the work of Henderson (1920). The information in the current checklist has been compiled from Henderson (1920), published reports since that time, and unpublished records from specimens in museums, collections of various expeditions and cruises, and other information gathered by the author. The information from the expeditions or cruises from which some of these records were derived is included in the reference section, but no attempt has been made to be exhaustive. Similarly, there are references to synonymy for some species, but no attempt was made to make this document into a complete taxonomic treatise. Please refer to the catalog of species-group names of Recent and fossil scaphopods (Steiner and Kabat 2004) for more taxonomic information. Because of their relative scarcity and deepwater habitat , there are few publications that provide anything but a mention of scaphopods. Even in the benthic infaunal literature , there are only rare mentions of their presence. I have deleted one or two species that have been indicated in some lists because they are distributed in relatively shallow water in more boreal areas and it is unlikely that they would be present in the Gulf of Mexico. Knowledge of scaphopod distribution is strongly influenced by the intensity of sampling. Distributions in the Gulf of Mexico are difficult to interpret because much of the western portion and significant areas of deep water remain relatively unexplored. In general there is one 745 36 Scaphopoda (Mollusca) of the Gulf of Mexico John N. Kraeuter  Scaphopoda. After Dall 1889. 746 ~ Scaphopoda (Mollusca) range from records throughout the range of the species; numbers in roman typeface are based on collections from the Gulf of Mexico only. Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used under the heading “Habitat-Biology:” ben = benthic; end = endemic solely to the Gulf of Mexico; inf = infaunal. Abbreviations used under the heading “Overall geographic range” include: GMx = Gulf of Mexico; N = North; NE = Northeast; SE = Southeast. Abbreviations used under the heading “GMx range” and within the endnotes: ne = northeast; nw = northwest; se = southeast; USBF = U.S. Bureau of Fisheries . References 1. Abbott, R. T. 1974. American Seashells: The Marine Mollusca of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of North America, 2nd ed. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York. 663 pp. 2. Caetano, C. H. S., and R. S. Absalão. 2005. A new species of the genus Polyschides Pilsbry and Sharp, 1898 (Mollusca, Scaphopoda, Gadilidae) from Brazilian waters. Zootaxa 871: 1–10. 3. Henderson, J. B. 1920. A monograph of the East American Scaphopod mollusks. United States National Museum Bulletin 111: 1–177. 4. Joyce, E. A. Jr., and J. Williams. 1969. Memoirs of the Hourglass Cruises: Rationale and Pertinent Data. Florida Department of Natural Resources, Marine Research Laboratory. Vol. I, Part I. 50 pp. 5. Kraeuter, J. N. 1971. A taxonomic and distributional study of the Western North Atlantic Dentaliidae (Mollusca: Scaphopoda) [PhD dissertation]. University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware. 239 pp. + figs. 6. NOAA National Ocean Service. 2004. National Benthic Inventory of Soft Sediment Fauna Database, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. [Internet]. Available from http://nbi.noaa.gov/ 7. Odé, H. 1964–2001. Distribution and records of the marine Mollusca in the northwest Gulf of Mexico. A continuing monograph. Texas Conchologist 23(1): 20–36. 8. Parker, R. H., and J. R. Curray. 1956. Fauna and bathymetry of banks on the continental shelf of northwest Gulf of Mexico. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 40(10): 2428–2439. group of shallow...

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