''Chondrina arcadica'' is a species of small air-breathing

land snail A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to the sea snails and freshwater snails. ''Land snail'' is the common name for terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have shells (those without shells are known as ...

, a terrestrial

pulmonate Pulmonata or pulmonates, is an informal group (previously an order, and before that a subclass) of snails and slugs characterized by the ability to breathe air, by virtue of having a pallial lung instead of a gill, or gills. The group includ ...

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 belonging to the family

Chondrinidae Chondrinidae is a family of mostly minute air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the order Pulmonata. Anatomy In this family, the number of haploid chromosomes lies between 26 and 30 (according to the values in ...

. This species is also known under the synonym ''Chondrina arcadica clienta'' (Westerlund 1883). The species is found South Europe and Sweden. Subspecies: * ''Chondrina arcadica abundans'' (Westerlund, 1894) * ''Chondrina arcadica arcadica'' (Reinhardt, 1881) or ''Chondrina arcadica clienta'' (Westerlund, 1883) * ''Chondrina arcadica bulgarica'' H. Nordsieck, 1970 * ''Chondrina arcadica caucasica'' Ehrmann, 1931

Shell description

The shell of this species is slender, greyish brown to reddish brown. It is conical-ovoid in shape with 7 to whorls. The shell is slightly translucent and shows regular axial lines. There is some microgeographical variation in its shell size. The apertural margin is slightly widened, and has a thin, whitish lip. There are strong, angular teeth along the aperture.

Distribution

The distribution of this species is Alpine and southeastern-European. but this snail can occur as far north as on the Baltic island of Öland, southern

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. The snails can be found on exposed limestone rocks to a height of about 2,500 m. This species occurs in: * Czech Republic - vulnerable (VU)Red List of the molluscs (Mollusca) of the Czech Republic
cited 19 September 2008 * Slovakia * UkraineBalashov I. & Gural-Sverlova N. 2012. An annotated checklist of the terrestrial molluscs of Ukraine. ''Journal of Conchology''. 41 (1): 91-109.

Feeding habits

''Chondrina clienta'' feeds on calcicolous

lichen A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.Chondrinidae {{Chondrinidae-stub