''Bythinella reyniesii'' is a
species of very small
freshwater snail
Freshwater snails are gastropod mollusks which live in fresh water. There are many different families. They are found throughout the world in various habitats, ranging from ephemeral pools to the largest lakes, and from small seeps and springs ...
, an
aquatic gastropod
The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda ().
This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...
mollusk in the family
Amnicolidae.
Distribution
These snails live in
spring
Spring(s) may refer to:
Common uses
* Spring (season), a season of the year
* Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy
* Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water
* Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a ...
s. They were long believed to occur only in
Andorra,
Austria, and parts of
France. This disjunct distribution was puzzling, until it was realized that the populations assigned to several other supposedly distinct species actually seem to all belong to one species. In fact, ''Bythinella reyniesii'' is probably widespread from western
Germany and nearby
Belgium through central and eastern France to Andorra.
[Bichain J.-M.. Gaubert P., Samadi S. & Boisselier-Dubayle M.-C. (2007). "A gleam in the dark: Phylogenetic species delimitation in the confusing spring-snail genus ''Bythinella'' Moquin-Tandon, 1856 (Gastropoda: Rissooidea: Amnicolidae)". '' Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution'' 45(3): 927–941. ]
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Description and genetics
These are small snails, with a nearly
cylindrical
A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
A cylinder may also be defined as an infini ...
shell measuring just over 2 mm in length. There is little
morphological and almost no genetic variation between the supposed "species". Thus, even though the proposed
synonymy resulted from
mtDNA COI and
nDNA ITS1 sequence data analyses applied to the
phylogenetic species concept
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sex ...
(which does not recognize
subspecies
In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...
), as opposed to the morphologically diverse ''
Bythinella bicarinata
''Bythinella bicarinata'' is a species of very small freshwater snail, an aquatic gastropod mollusk in the family Amnicolidae.
Shell description
The shell of this species measures about 2.2–2.6 mm long and has a pupoidal shape (shaped ...
'' it might not even be warranted to accept the formerly distinct
taxa as subspecies.
Conservation status
The northeastern specimens formerly separated in ''Bythinella compressa'' were classified as
Vulnerable
Vulnerable may refer to:
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* Vulnerability
* Vulnerability (computing)
* Vulnerable adult
* Vulnerable species
Music
Albums
* ''Vulnerable'' (Marvin Gaye album), 1997
* ''Vulnerable'' (Tricky album), 2003
* ''Vulnerable'' (The Used album) ...
(B1+2c), as they were known from less than ten freshwater springs which are affected by pollution.
''Bythinella reyniesii'', in the traditional sense was classified as a Species of Least Concern (meaning it is not considered globally threatened),
and this assessment applies to the species in the expanded sense also.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bythinella Reyniesii
Bythinella
Gastropods described in 1851
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot