1961-1962 - American Museum of Natural History

tracts, as well as the implantation of living tissues.
Dr. Meredith L. Jones continued his work on the taxonomy of
the polychaetous annelids, completing the study of a collection
from Jamaica which included two new genera and six new species,
as well as progressing in a study of five new species of the
family Magelonidae. His study dealing with the spatial distribution
of the benthonic meiofauna off Point Richmond, San
Francisco Bay, was advanced almost to completion. As
time permitted, he continued the preliminary curation of the
collections made by the "Vema," research vessel of the Lamont
Geological Observatory, and initiated the taxonomic study of
extensive collections of polychaetes from northwest Florida.
Dr. Libbie H. Hyman advanced her work on the Mollusca,
volume 6 of the series "The Invertebrates," and completed a
paper on some terrestrial flatworms from the Caribbean area.
Dr. Horace W. Stunkard received a grant from the National
Science Foundation to aid in his long-term studies of the morphology,
life cycles, and systematics of parasitic flatworms. Dr.
H. E. Coomans continued his investigations of the marine mollusks
of the Netherlands West Indies.
Curatorial activities continued to be a major departmental
project. More than 100,000 invertebrates were catalogued.
Among the 106 accessions received during the year, most noteworthy
was the R. L. Stuart Collection of mollusks, totaling some
35,000 specimens. Considerable progress was made in the reorganization
of the mollusk reference collection with the aid
of a grant from the National Science Foundation. Mrs. Rodney
Procter made a generous contribution to the Beatrice S. Procter
Fund which is used to purchase molluscan specimens not
represented in this collection.
The year saw the virtual completion of five years of work,
when a long manuscript on tissue respiration in invertebrates
by Dr. Bliss and Dr. Dorothy M. Skinner of the New York University
School of Medicine reached page proof. A popular
handbook, "Shells of the New York City Area," co-authored by
36