Albinaria
Apertural view of a shell of Albinaria latelamellaris
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Gastropoda
Subclass: Heterobranchia
Order: Stylommatophora
Family: Clausiliidae
Tribe: Medorini
Genus: Albinaria
Vest, 1867[1]
Diversity[2]
116 species

Albinaria is a genus of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Clausiliidae, the door snails.[3]

Ecology and Life Cycle

The snails live on limestone rocks, where they feed on algae and lichen. They are active only during the wet season, that is, in Mediterranean lowlands, from November through April. Eggs are laid shortly after the beginning of the wet season. The development from a juvenile to a fully grown shell takes two to three wet seasons. During the intermittent dry seasons, the snails, young and adults alike, aestivate ("the warm weather equivalent of hibernation"[4]) on the rocks or in crevices inside the rocks. For aestivation, aggregates are often formed, sometimes reaching sizes of many hundreds of individuals. During the last dry season prior to sexual maturation, the subadult snail (the shell of which is already fully developed, albeit thinner than that of an adult) increases the size of its genital organs. Copulation then takes place during the first weeks of autumn rains. Population densities can sometimes be very high, in spite of heavy predation by beetle larvae of the genus Drilus. These insects attack the snails during their aestivation, by perforating the shell and eating the snail inside.[5]

Distribution

Distribution of the genus Albinaria includes:

Species

Species in this genus include 111 species:[6]

References

  1. ^ (in German) Vest, W. von 1867. Ueber den Schliessapparat der Clausilien. Verhandlungen und Mittheilungen des Siebenbürgischen Vereins für Naturwissenschaften in Hermannstadt 18 (1, 7, 8): 5-18, 161-174, 188-196.
  2. ^ "Species in genus Albinaria n=116". AnimalBase, accessed 10 March 2011.
  3. ^ Schilthuizen, M., 1994. Differentiation and Hybridisation in a Polytypic Snail. PhD Thesis, Leiden University.
  4. ^ Gould, S.J., 1985. The Flamingo's Smile; Reflections in Natural History. Norton, New York
  5. ^ Baalbergen, E., R. Helwerda, R. Schelfhorst, R.F.Castillo Cajas, C.H.M. van Moorsel, R. Kundrata, F.W. Welter-Schultes, S. Giokas & M. Schilthuizen, 2014. Predator-prey interactions between shell-boring beetle larvae and rock-dwelling land snails. PLoS ONE, 9(6): e100366
  6. ^ Species in genus Albinaria . AnimalBase, accessed 21 September 2009.

Further reading

External links

Taxon identifiers
Category