''Semilimax pyrenaicus'' is a

species 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 s ...

of 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 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 ...

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 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 ...

in the family

Vitrinidae Vitrinidae is a family of small, air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Limacoidea (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005). MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBa ...

. It is a large greyish-brown snail that cannot fully retract into its shell.

Description

For terms see

gastropod shell The gastropod shell is part of the body of a Gastropoda, gastropod or snail, a kind of mollusc. The shell is an exoskeleton, which protects from predators, mechanical damage, and dehydration, but also serves for muscle attachment and calcium s ...

. The body of this semi-slug is too large to be contained in the very flat and depressed ear-shaped shell. The shell body whorl is ¾ of the total breadth viewed from above. It is very thin, fragile and transparent. Shell colour is greenish or yellowish. The shell aperture has a mouth membrane which runs from the umbilicus along the inside of the outer lip. The animal is pale to dark grey or black, paler forms have large dark grey areas. The mantle lobe is very large. Genitalia:Penis with appendix, joins vagina below the insertion of spermatheca duct.

Distribution and habitat

This species is known to occur in Brittany, the French Pyrenees, Andorra, Spain and southwestern Ireland. This is called a

Lusitanian distribution In biology, a taxon with a disjunct distribution is one that has two or more groups that are related but considerably separated from each other geographically. The causes are varied and might demonstrate either the expansion or contraction of a s ...

and was at one time thought to represent the survival of species in an ice-free land mass that served as a refugium during the last ice age. This theory has now been discredited as Ireland is thought to have been entirely covered by ice during the height of the

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...

glaciation. It now seems likely that these species were re-introduced into Ireland after the last glaciation, probably accidentally with human migration in the late

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

or early

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

. It typically inhabits humid and shady places, between rocks, or in Ireland in woodland amongst moist ground litter, usually on non-calcareous soils. It is not usually found in areas grazed by livestock.

References

External links

''Semilimax pyrenaicus''
at

Animalbase AnimalBase is a project brought to life in 2004 and is maintained by the University of Göttingen, Germany. The goal of the AnimalBase project is to digitize early zoological literature, provide copyright-free open access to zoological works, and pr ...

taxonomy,short description, distribution, biology,status (threats), images * Info on Irish occurrence

*

Fauna Europaea Fauna Europaea is a database of the scientific names and distribution of all living multicellular European land and fresh-water animals. It serves as a standard taxonomic source for animal taxonomy within the Pan-European Species directories Infras ...

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Distribution * Photo of live individual at

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7449437 Vitrinidae Gastropods described in 1821