Periploma orbiculare Guppy, 1882

Periploma orbiculare Guppy, 1882

This empty but rather fresh specimen of Periploma orbiculare (Guppy, 1882) measuring 28.9 mm was brought up with many fish, crustaceans, and Polystira tellea (Dall, 1889) in a dredge haul.

Guppy’s taxon had been ignored for many years until it was discussed and resurrected by Huber (2010: 783), who placed it in synonymy with P. coseli Ardila & Díaz, 1998 - a taxon which like P. orbiculare was known only from the southern Caribbean. However, an empty but complete specimen was dredged in Bahía de Campeche in 2005 (EFG 26044; 20º46.97'N, 91º55.86'W, in 28-48 m. in mud), and in 2011 another empty but complete specimen was dredged off the Alabama coast (EFG 30167; 29º24.724'N, 87º58.597'W, in 73-76 m.). These records have been unreported until now. Periploma orbiculare has also been reported from the Texas coast (Tunnell et al., 2010: 337), apparently from a single drilled valve, even thought it was reported as a “live specimen”. The depth in which the specimen was collected (3 m.) also suggests that this was not its natural habitat as all other Gulf specimens have been collected at much greater depths. (E. F. García, 26 October, 2012)