[Taxacom] Are slugs subgroup(s) of snails

[Stephen Thorpe]

>If I recall correctly, the paua slug has a slightly coiled shell, only it does not coil around the body
True! And there are gastropods like some pelagic heteropods with tiny versions of normal coiled shells stuck on to an ENORMOUS body!

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of John Grehan [jgrehan at sciencebuff.org]
Sent: Friday, 4 September 2009 2:24 p.m.
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Are slugs subgroup(s) of snails

If I recall correctly, the paua slug has a slightly coiled shell, only
it does not coil around the body.

John Grehan

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Frederick W
Schueler
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 10:15 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Are slugs subgroup(s) of snails

Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> And what about semislugs?! Slugs with visible shells that they can't
withdraw into completely! Come on, the whole point with common names is
that they are not perfectly precise in meaning - that is why we need
scientific names. There is no answer to the question: is a slug also a
snail? Actually, this quite nicely illustrates the tendency of certain
personality types, common on the list, to try to find perfect  precision
where none exists, either in the Code, or in meaning of 'slug'...

* a snail is a Gastropod with a coiled shell, a limpet is a Gastropod
with a non-coiled, umbrella-like shell, and slug is a Gastropod without
enough shell to retreat into. Both of the latter are polyphyletic
life-style choices, and the former is hugely paraphyletic, so none of
them need the name of an author appended.

The above was written without consulting wiki-anything, or the EoL.

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
            Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
       RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
    on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
      (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca
------------------------------------------------------------
If we'd been meant to refer to species by made-up vernacular names,
                God wouldn't have created Linnaeus!
------------------------------------------------------------

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