Milacidae is a

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

of air-breathing,

keel The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element on a vessel. On some sailboats, it may have a hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose, as well. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in Br ...

ed, land

slug Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a smal ...

s. These are shell-less

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

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 Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

s in the superfamily

Parmacelloidea Parmacelloidea is a superfamily of air-breathing land slugs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the clade Stylommatophora and the informal group Pulmonata. These are limacoid or keelback slugs. Families Families within the super ...

. This family has no subfamilies (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005).

Distribution

The distribution of the Milacidae includes the western

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

Anatomy

In this family, the number of

haploid Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Sets of chromosomes refer to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, respectively ...

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

s lies between 31 and 35 (according to the values in this table).Barker G. M.: Gastropods on Land: ''Phylogeny, Diversity and Adaptive Morphology''. in Barker G. M. (ed.):
The biology of terrestrial molluscs
'. CABI Publishing, Oxon, UK, 2001, . 1-146, cited pages: 139 and 142.

Genera

Genera within the family Milacidae include: * '' Milax'' Gray, 1855 - type genus * ''

Tandonia ''Tandonia'' is a genus of air-breathing, keeled, land slugs. These are shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusks in the family Milacidae. Distribution The distribution of the genus ''Tandonia'' includes Europe to North Africa and Asia Mino ...

'' Lessona & Pollonera, 1882

Cladogram

The following

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ...

shows the

phylogenic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

relationships of this family to the other families in the

limacoid clade The Limacoidei is a taxonomic infraorder of air-breathing land snails, semislugs and slugs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs in the suborder Helicina Distribution The original ancestral area of limacoid families is thought to be the ...

:Hausdorf B. (2000). "Biogeography of the Limacoidea sensu lato (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora): Vicariance Events and Long-Distance Dispersal". ''

Journal of Biogeography The ''Journal of Biogeography'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal in biogeography that was established in 1974. It covers aspects of spatial, ecological, and historical biogeography. The founding editor-in-chief was David Watts, followed by J ...

'' 27(2): 379-390.
JSTOR

References

External links