On September 25th, The Natural History Museum was host to a new event by The Society for young malacological researchers. Alex Ball, who ran the meeting, describes the organisation of the event, and Neale Monks, one of the speakers, reports on the sessions.

First - Alex:

"I have to confess that I didn't sleep well the night before the meeting and, unusually for me, was up at the crack of dawn ready to go in and set things up. Once at work I was able to calm down and get things ready fairly calmly. All the necessary arrangements had been made in advance and it didn't take long for Fred Naggs and myself to set out the chairs and get the meeting room into some sort of order. We set out 60 chairs and hoped that there wouldn't be too many empty seats. By this time John Taylor had arrived and was helping me to locate the tea urn and had brought up most of the refreshments for the morning tea-break. After 3 months of planning, I had 13 speakers and 6 poster presentations lined up and was expecting a further 15 or so people to attend. We'd guessed that this would be about right and had catered accordingly. Now all I was worried about was where everyone was.

"At 9.45 I went along to the main reception to check that all was well and found to my horror that I had given them the wrong time for the meeting and that anyone who had arrived had been sent away to come back `closer to the time'. Fred agreed to wait at reception to send people along while I decided to use some of my empty slots to run the first half of the meeting late and catch up over lunch.

"The next fifteen minutes saw the room rapidly fill up as people arrived and signed in, settled in their seats or milled around as the speakers and myself tried to identify each other. Fortunately most of the speakers had brought pre-loaded slide cassettes with them and the meeting got off to a fairly prompt start, half an hour late, with David Reid and I giving essentially the same welcoming speech. Unfortunately, despite having spent an hour writing and two hours practising my welcome, David ad-libbed his way through his first and left me mumbling a few words of thanks and apology before getting the meeting started.

"The next few hours are a blur. I really can't remember in detail what was said, all I have is a series of impressions. For the most part, the standard of the talks was very high, with good slides and well presented data. There were a few exceptions, in that some speakers were obviously much more composed and competent than others. The diversity of subject matter was also extremely pleasing and there were also some topics where the molluscan aspect was a peripheral part of a larger project.

"However, my overall memories of the meeting were that it succeeded in providing an informal, "low-pressure" atmosphere, that the discussions gradually got more and more searching and informative and that people seemed to be enjoying themselves. We attracted a fairly multi-lingual crowd, with some participants choosing to combine a meeting with a trip to the Museum and its collections.

"From the feedback I have received so far, it seems as though most people felt that the format worked extremely well. It was not as arduous an experience as I had feared and this was particularly helped by the speed with which abstracts and other information were forwarded to me. We will definitely try to run it again next year and I would like to thank everyone who helped and participated."

Alex Ball

Zoology Dept., Natural History Museum, London

Next, Neale Monks reports on the sessions:

"It is one of the important functions of any academic society to introduce new scientists in the field to one another and to give them the opportunity to describe their work to a wider audience. The Young Malacologists' Forum was devised to do exactly this, and the meeting at the Natural History Museum on September 25th served this purpose admirably.

"Perhaps the main theme of the meeting, unsurprisingly for molluscs, was the vigour and diversity of research on the phylum. Study ranged from fossil nautiloids to recent periwinkles, and from the entire mollusc faunas of Kenya down to the distribution of a single species of snail on the island of Madeira. Another theme was Littorina.

"The first talk was presented by a very young malacologist (of sorts), Jeremy Young, who is better known as an authority on coccolithophore evolution, and who gave a discussion on heteromorph ammonite morphology. In keeping with a new trend in presentations, Jeremy made much use of computer animations to demonstrate aspects of his research. I followed Jeremy, describing work on the same group of ammonites, but this time using cladistics as a way of investigating the evolutionary changes responsible for the adaptations described in the preceeding talk.

"Mary Berry was the first of the Littorina mafia, and gave a discussion of the relationship between the aperture thickness and distribution. Although this feature has generally been supposed to be related to predation by crabs, Mary is not so sure, and thinks that other environmental factors could be responsible. The final talk before morning coffee was by Christina Vina Herbon, who described the distribution of the marine molluscs on the coast of Northern Spain.

"After coffee there was more on Littorina, this time from Richard Clarke who has been looking into shell shape and genetics. This is especially important in understanding how variations of genes in populations are related to shore structure and the distance between populations. Darren Grîcke then gave a talk on his study of Nautilus pearl, looking at the isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the shell material. The next presentation was given by Helmut Kubista on calcium bonding in the nervous system of Helix snails, which finished in time for lunch. Molluscs have long been favoured subjects for neurophysiologists, and Helmut's work demonstrates that the tradition is still strong.

"Charles Lange kicked off the third session, with an account of the diversity of terrestrial molluscs in West Kenya. One of the most critical tasks facing malacologists is addressing the problem of conservation, especially when attention tends to become focussed on big, furry animals. Molluscs are players in many ecosystems, even if they tend to be rather unobtrusive, and Charles described the techniques used in assessing the populations and distributions of molluscs in natural forests and developed plantations. Tim Wright then gave an interesting account of the workings of the buccal mass in a species of slug which is an agricultural pest. The question is whether such studies will lead to species-specific molluscicides. The rather catholic diet of the starfish Astropecten was described by Steven Freeman. Steve's work suggests that Astropecten may be a little more selective than has previously been thought, taking Spisula clams in especially high numbers. The session was rounded off with another dip into the world of Littorina, with Lisa Johnson's account of the population dynamics of Littorina species from the Yorkshire coast.

"The final session began with a report on field and laboratory work on heat tolerance in Littorina given by Andrea Clarke. Like all intertidal animals, Littorina needs to be able to resist great changes in humidity and temperature, which vary with every tide. Andrea has found appreciable differences in tolerance of heat in four species, and suspects these may be important in defining the ecology of each species. Hywel Stone looked at one of the most familiar but least understood aspects of bivalve morphology: spine formation. In this case, Hywel examined Spondylus, the thorny oyster, in detail and found complex structures on the margins of the mantle which may be responsible for secretion of the spines. Katrin Linse then gave a report on the biogeography of the molluscs around the Magellan Straits, between South America and Antarctica. Finally Paul Craze discussed the snails Heterostoma from the islands of Madeira, where he has observed remarkable variation in reproductive anatomy and behaviour, which he believes are part of the process of speciation.

"All in all, the talks show the current rising stars of malacology have particular interests in the distribution and biogeography of molluscs both as individuals and as populations. Whole animal ecology and biology is clearly thriving, something that was not so certain even a few years ago. In part this should ensure that malacologists will have much that is useful to say about conservation and biodiversity."

Neale Monks

Palaeontology Dept., Natural History Museum, London