Turrid, plural turrids, is a common name for a very large group of predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks which until recently were all classified in the family Turridae. However, recently the family was discovered to be polyphyletic and therefore was split into a number of families.
The original family Turridae used to contain more than 4,000 species.[1] the Turridae (sensu Powell 1966) [2] It was the largest mollusk family and the largest group of marine caenogastropods.[3] There were approximately 27,000 described scientific names (accepted names plus synonyms) within the family Turridae.[4] Turrids constituted more than half of the predatory species of gastropods in some parts of the world (Taylor et al. 1980).[5] However, this very large family was shown to be polyphyletic, and in 2011 it was divided into 13 separate families by Bouchet, Kantor, Sysoev and Puilandre.
The single most complete collection of turrids in museums worldwide is in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia malacology collection; this is because of specialized collecting by the American malacologist Virginia Orr Maes (1920-1986).[4]
- ^ Des Beechey (2003). Family Turridae. Turrids. Accessed 30 November 2007.
- ^ Powell, A.W.B. (1966) The molluscan families Speightiidae and Turridae an evaluation of the valid taxa, both Recent and fossil, with lists of characteristic species. Bulletin of the Auckland Institute and Museum, 5, 1–184, 23 pls
- ^ Bouchet, P. (1997) Inventorying the molluscan diversity of the world: what is our rate of progress? The Veliger, 40, 1–11.
- ^ a b Robertson R. (1987). "Virginia Orr Maes (1920-1986): Biography and <Malacological Bibliography". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 139: 527-532.
- ^ Taylor, J.D., Morris, N.J. & Taylor, C.N. (1980) Food specialization and the evolution of predatory prosobranch gastropods. Palaeontology, 23, 375–409
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