Annotated Checklist Of Mollusks Of Chesapeake Bay PDF Download

My hobby is collecting the mollusks of Chesapeake Bay. Having placed a few specimens in museums, and having made a check list · (no new species yet) with appended distribution records, I found my hobby less stimulating than my research. But then my research had taken a turn which opened up new and inviting fields of discovery. For some time Ray and Mackin searched among the invertebrate associates of oysters for alternate hosts, only to find that infection was easily accomplished directly from one oyster to another through water-borne spores (J. G. Mackin, Personal Communication). Since other bivalve mollusks would not be suspected as alternate hosts for an oyster disease, little effort was made to check them. With this background, we at the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory were surprised in August, 1953, to find the meat of a dead clam, Venus mercenaria, infected with a D. marinum-like fungus. During the fall and winter of 1953-54, 12 of-16 species of bivalve mollusks collected near Gloucester Point, Virginia, were found infected with similar fungi (Table I). None of the fungus parasites has been identified except the one causing a mycosis in oysters. How many species of fungi are involved? Can spores from one host species infect individuals of other species? And of most immediate importance, how many bivalve species will serve as host to the oyster parasite?