IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB114617481

Liguus Landscapes: Amateur Liggers, Professional Malacology, and the Social Lives of Snail Sciences (2022)

Jonathan M. Galka (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 55
Issue: 4
Pages: 689-723

DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09695-4

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-022-09695-4

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Malacology Mollusks Scientific communities; interprofessional relations Invertebrate zoology Human-animal relationships Expertise Classification in biology 20th century United States Cuba Everglades National Park

Malacologists took notice of tree snails in the genus Liguus during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since then, Liguus have undergone repeated shifts in identity as members of species, states, shell collections, backyard gardens, and engineered wildernesses. To understand what Liguus are, this paper examines snail enthusiasts, collectors, researchers, and conservationists—collectively self-identified as Liggers—in their varied landscapes. I argue that Liguus, both in the scientific imaginary and in the material landscape, mediated knowledge-making processes that circulated among amateur and professional malacologists across the United States and Cuba during the twentieth century. Beginning with an examination of early Liggers’ work in Florida and Cuba, this paper demonstrates how notions of taxonomy and biogeography informed later efforts to understand Liguus hybridization and conservation. A heterogeneous community of Liggers has had varied and at times contradictory commitments informed by shifting physical, social, and scientific landscapes. Genealogizing those commitments illuminates the factors underpinning a decision to undertake the until now little-chronicled large-scale and sustained transplantation of every living Floridian form of Liguus fasciatus into Everglades National Park. The social history of Liggers and Liguus fundamentally blurs distinctions between professional scientists and amateur naturalists. The experiences of a diverse cast of Liggers and their Liguus snails historicize the complex character of human-animal relations and speak to the increasing endangerment of many similarly range-restricted invertebrates.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB114617481/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Evans, N.J.; (1998)
Gentlemen and players in malacology: An appreciation of A.E. Boycott and H.E. Quick (/isis/citation/CBB000083269/)

Article Dexter, Ralph W.; (1981)
Some malacological journal notes and correspondence of E. S. Morse (/isis/citation/CBB000017043/)

Article Heppell, David; (1995)
The long dawn of malacology: A brief history of malacology from prehistory to the year 1800 (/isis/citation/CBB000070601/)

Article Cianfanelli, Simone; Manganelli, Giuseppe; (2002)
A Bibliography of Marianna Paulucci (1835--1919) (/isis/citation/CBB000740299/)

Article Cleevely, R.J.; (1995)
Some “malacological pioneers” and their links with the transition from shell-collecting to conchology during the first half of the 19th century (/isis/citation/CBB000070624/)

Chapter Bessire, Marie-Jeanne Liengme; Béguelin, Sylvia; (2008)
Did Jean Piaget's Conversion from Malacology to Psychology Happen in the Faculty of Arts? (/isis/citation/CBB000760415/)

Article Matthew Shindell; (2019)
Making a Community of Experts: The Rise of Consensus-Based Assessments for Policy in Cold War America (/isis/citation/CBB850924469/)

Article Dritsas, Lawrence; (2005)
From Lake Nyassa to Philadelphia: A Geography of the Zambesi Expedition, 1858--64 (/isis/citation/CBB000501644/)

Article Manganelli, G.; Lori, E.; Cianfanelli, S.; (2009)
Eponyms Honouring Marianna Paulucci (1835--1919) (/isis/citation/CBB000931228/)

Article Brysse, Keynyn; (2008)
From Weird Wonders to Stem Lineages: The Second Reclassification of theBurgess Shale Fauna (/isis/citation/CBB000831712/)

Article Ausich, William I.; Lane, N. Gary; (2005)
Isolated Ideas: Crinoid Literature of the Sixteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB000630869/)

Chapter Monzote, Reinaldo Funes; (2013)
Animal Labor and Protection in Cuba: Changes in Relationships with Animals in the Nineteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001422679/)

Article Christine Y. L. Luk; (2024)
The Chinese Freshwater Jellyfish Unbound: Evolution, Nomenclature, and Bioinvasion of Craspedacusta sowerbii, 1880–1941 (/isis/citation/CBB998640343/)

Article Anderson, Lyall I.; Lowe, Mathew; (2010)
Charles W. Peach and Darwin's Barnacles (/isis/citation/CBB001231387/)

Book Monti, Maria Teresa; (2005)
Spallanzani e le rigenerazioni animali: l'inchiesta, la comunicazione, la rete (/isis/citation/CBB000772771/)

Article Mathilde Lequin; (2022)
Comment nommer la lignée humaine ? De l’ordre des Bimanes à la sous-tribu des hominiens (/isis/citation/CBB412033582/)

Chapter Meens, Rob; (2002)
Eating Animals in the Early Middle Ages: Classifying the Animal World and Building Group Identities (/isis/citation/CBB000359572/)

Book Dupré, John; (2002)
Humans and Other Animals (/isis/citation/CBB000501634/)

Article Mikael Wolfe; (September 28, 2020)
Cuba’s "Battle of Spare Parts" Against the US Blockade (1961-1964) (/isis/citation/CBB680568004/)

Book Reid-Henry, Simon; (2010)
The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science (/isis/citation/CBB001033359/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}