Ficidae

Abstract: The family Ficidae (fig shells) is the only known member in the superfamily Ficoidea (Meek, 1864). Although fig shells are closely related to the Tonnidae (tun shells), their shell shape distinguishes them apart (Verhaeghe & Poppe, 2000), hence they are placed in a separate superfamily Ficoidea. To date, there are 12 known species of Ficus (Roding, 1798) and one species of Thalassocyon (Barnard, 1960) within the Ficidae (Beesley et al., 1998; Liu & Wang, 1999). With numerous synonyms created for this genus (Table 1), the nomenclatural history of the Ficidae has been complex (Boss, 1982; Verhaeghe & Poppe, 2000). In earlier literature such as Rogers (1908), and Thiele (1935), the oldest available synonym for fig shells was Pyrulidae (Swainson, 1840). However, the valid name used in this paper is Ficidae, as suggested by Verhaeghe & Poppe (2000) citing the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) Article 40b as reference. According to Chuang (1973: 191, 196), an occasional Ficus ficus (Lamarck, 1758) could be found in the deep sand off the southeast part of Singapore. There were also recent local sightings of live Ficus variegata (Roding, 1798) on the shores of Singapore. Upon examination of the fig shell collections from the Zoological Reference Collection (ZRC) of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity and Research (RMBR), National University of Singapore, together with further reading of the literature, taxonomic information of fig shells was generally disorganised and ambiguous. Hence, the current state of taxonomic nomenclature among some of the Ficus species is discussed in this paper.