U.S.-Nigeria Cooperative Research on Patterns of Predation and Taxonomic Diversification in Cenozoic Gastropod Assemblages

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This proposal requests funds to permit Dr. Alan J. Kohn, Department of Zoology, University of Washington, and Dr. Ingela Arua, Department of Geology, University of Nigeria, to pursue, for a period of 24 months, a program of cooperative research on patterns of predation and taxonomic diversification in Cenozoic gastropod assemblages. The research will address the question: How did the complex communities in which Conidae are so prominent develop in time? The collaborators will utilize material collected by the PI under prior NSF grants from assemblages ranging in age from latest Miocene to latest Pleistocene in the Ryukyu and Fiji Islands. Their methods will include (1) multivariate analysis of morphometric and other shell characters and (2) species determination by reference to the analysis of type specimens and discriminating within-species variation from between-species differences. This project focuses on one of the largest families of marine gastropod molluscs, the Conidae. This family of mainly tropical marine snails is important because of its very high diversity, the broad geographic range of many of its species, its ecological role as a dominant predatory group, primarily in the shallow tropical seas of the Indo-West Pacific region, and its unusual danger to man. Its neurotoxic venom, normally used to overpower prey, can be fatal to man. This project adds an international cooperative dimension to Dr. Kohn's research supported under NSF Grant No. BSR-8700523. Dr. Arua's expertise gained during her studies of gastropod predation patterns in the Eocene of Nigeria will greatly benefit the project. This project is relevant to the objectives of the Science in Developing Countries Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. scientists and engineers and their counterparts in developing countries through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit.