Levantina Explained

Levantina is a genus of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the subfamily Helicinae of the family Helicidae, the typical snails.[1]

Description

Large rock-dwelling land snails with flatted or less often broadly conical shells, some species or populations with an umbilicus. The shell is keeled in some species, at least in juveniles.

Distribution

The natural distribution range of Levantina stretches from the central Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey soutwards to Israel and Jordan and eastwards to the Alborz Mountains in northern Iran[2] and the Kermanshah Province in western Iran.[3] One species lives on Cyprus, and four have been described from the mountains in the west of Arabian Peninsula.[4]

The L. spiriplana complex has been introduced to Cyprus and the eastern Aegean.

Species

The species-level taxonomy of Levantina is unsettled, because molecular phylogeny based on mitochondrial genes[5] found many of the species recognized by morphological revisions[6] [7] to be very closely related. The real number of species may thus be lower than currently assumed.

Levantina longinqua is an enigmatic taxon where only the original series is known. It was allegedly collected south-east of Samarqand, Uzbekistan.[8] That would be the eastern-most natural occurrence of any helicid, but a confirmation is needed.

Levantina semitecta from the northwest of Saudi Arabia is known only from shells.

For several species (L. longinqua, L. mahanica, L. ninivita, L. semitecta), there are no sequence data whatsoever (as of 2023).

References

Notes and References

  1. MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Levantina Kobelt, 1871. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=996430 on 2021-05-08
  2. Schütt . Hartwig . Subai . Peter . 1996 . Revision der Gattung Assyriella P. Hesse 1908 (Gastropoda: Pulmonata: Helicidae: Helicinae) . . 125 . 117-161.
  3. Web site: Levantina mahanica von Kermanshah Province, Iran am 15. März 2023 um 09:29 PM von aryathesage · iNaturalist .
  4. Neubert . Eike . 1998 . Annotated checklist of the terrestrial and freshwater molluscs of the Arabian Peninsula with descriptions of new species . . 17 . 333–461.
  5. Korábek . Ondřej . Glaubrecht . Matthias . Hausdorf . Bernhard . Neiber . Marco T. . 2022 . Phylogeny of the land snail Levantina reveals long‐distance dispersal in the Middle East . . en . 51 . 2 . 161–172 . 10.1111/zsc.12526 . 0300-3256.
  6. Pfeiffer . Karl L. . 1949 . Levantina spiriplana (Olivier). . . 77 . 1-51.
  7. Neubert . Eike . Amr . Zuhar S. . Waitzbauer . Wolfgang . Al Talafha . Hazim . 2015-12-17 . Annotated checklist of the terrestrial gastropods of Jordan (Mollusca: Gastropoda) . Archiv für Molluskenkunde International Journal of Malacology . en . 144 . 2 . 169–238 . 10.1127/arch.moll/1869-0963/144/169-238 . 1869-0963.
  8. Dohrn . H. . 1882 . Ueber einige centralasiatische Landschnecken . Jahrbücher Der Deutschen Malakozoologischen Gesellschaft . 9 . 115-120.

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