Zoila friendii marina Kostin 2005

In the recent issue of Visaya, Andrey Kostin gives a name to the northern subspecies of friendii, which has commonly been misidentified as jeaniana thalamega, mainly ba Australian dealers who happened to have a few of them in their stock. Now everybody is happy because prices for these northern friendiis have gone through the roof, and the recognition of this interesting subspecies of Zoila was overdue. Not wanting to repeat the careful and well done description by Kostin here I am illustrating the holotype of marina, which is characterized mainly by having a more or less complete set of columellar teeth. It occurs alongside jeaniana thalamega in the Kalbarri area, and is also found in the Abrolhos and the Jurien Bay area. In his description, Kostin gives a comment which I would like to repeat here:

"Specimens of friendii marina and jeaniana thalamega are illustrated with friendii on plate 74 and then again with jeaniana on plate 126 by Wilson & Clarkson, suggesting that jeaniana and friendii are mixing wildly across most of their range in the west of Australia. This may seem intimidating, but it really is deceiving. If populations with distinct conchological characteristics occur over a wide range then there is evidence enough for establishing a subspecies. In the case of friendii marina, the "intermediate" character is derived from the occurrence of a jeaniana-feature (distinct columellar dentition throughout) and a feature of friendii (dark margins and base). These two main diagnostic features of f. marina are not linking friendii with jeaniana, but it is the combination of them in one population that makes such shells appear to be intermediates. The "northern friendii" described herein demonstrates the close relationship between friendii and jeaniana. Interestingly their distributional pattern agrees with that of the Zoila marginata-group, including ketyana bataviensis and k. ketyana."