Staffordiidae 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 land snails,

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 gastropod

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 Trochomorphoidea. MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Staffordiidae Thiele, 1931. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=994727 on 2021-02-22 Staffordiidae is the only family in the superfamily Staffordioidea. This family has no subfamilies (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005). Staffordiidae is a poorly understood family, because it occurs only in the

Dafla Hills Daphla (or ''Dafla'') Hills is a tract of hilly country on the border of western Arunachal and Assam occupied by an independent tribe called Daphla. It lies to the north of the Tezpur and North Lakhimpur subdivisions, and is bounded on the west ...

area of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The fauna and flora of that area has not been researched sufficiently. Various sources consider the family Staffordiidae as part of

Dyakiidae Dyakiidae is a family of air-breathing land snails terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Trochomorphoidea (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005). Some of the species in this family are ...

Barker G. M. (2001) ''Gastropods on Land: Phylogeny, Diversity and Adaptive Morphology''. 1–146. In: Barker G. M. (ed.) (2001)
The biology of terrestrial molluscs
'. CABI Publishing, Oxon, UK, cited pages: 139–144. . or

Ariophantidae Ariophantidae is a taxonomic family of air-breathing land snails and semi-slugs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Helicarionoidea (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005). Distribution ...

/Dyakiinae.

Distribution

The distribution of the Staffordiidae includes only

in the

. This area is close to northern margin of the

Indian plate The Indian Plate (or India Plate) is a minor tectonic plate straddling the equator in the Eastern Hemisphere. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, the Indian Plate broke away from the other fragments of Gondwana , began ...

. The historical area of origin of the Staffordiidae has not been researched because the coastal area in southern Asia where it is found became uninhabitable after the Indian Plate and

Eurasian Plate The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and ...

collided 50 to 55 million years ago. The original ancestral area of limacoid families is thought to be the

Palaearctic 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 ...

region and south-eastern Asia. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the Staffordiidae colonized its current area from the southern margin of the Asian part of the Eurasian Plate during the Oligocene period.

Genera

Genera within the family Staffordiidae include: * '' Staffordia'' Godwin-Austen, 1907 – type genus of the family ** '' Staffordia daflaensis'' (Godwin-Austen)Ramakrishna, Dey A. & Mitra S. C. (PDF created 6 April 2010)
"Checklist of Indian Land Mollusca"
.

Zoological Survey of India The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), founded on 1 July 1916 by Government of India Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, as premier Indian organisation in zoological research and studies to promote the survey, exploration and r ...

. accessed 30 June 2010. 65 pp. ** '' Staffordia staffordi'' Godwin-Austen, 1907 ** '' Staffordia toruputuensis'' Godwin-Austen The generic name ''Staffordia'' is in honor of Brigadier-General

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 70,145 in t ...

, who was in command of the punitive force which entered the

for the first time in the winter of 1874–1875. The foot of ''Staffordia'' is pointed. The peripodial margin is simple with a narrow pale margin. There are small right and left shell-lobes.

Reproductive system The reproductive system of an organism, also known as the genital system, is the biological system made up of all the anatomical organs involved in sexual reproduction. Many non-living substances such as fluids, hormones, and pheromones are als ...

of ''Staffordia'': the

dart Dart or DART may refer to: * Dart, the equipment in the game of darts Arts, entertainment and media * Dart (comics), an Image Comics superhero * Dart, a character from ''G.I. Joe'' * Dart, a ''Thomas & Friends'' railway engine character * Dar ...

-sac is small, globose, with a long cord-like attachment to a coronal gland. The penis is simple. The spermatheca is long. The radula of ''Staffordia'' has aculeate lateral teeth. Comparison of shells of three ''Staffordia'' species:

Cladogram

Staffordiidae is considered a sister group of all other families in the limacoid clade. 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 ...

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 and superfamily to the other families within 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 b ...

:Hausdorf B. (2000). "Biogeography of the Limacoidea sensu lato (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora): Vicariance Events and Long-Distance Dispersal". '' Journal of Biogeography'' 27(2): 379–390.
JSTOR

References

This article incorporates public domain text from the reference. Godwin-Austen H. H. (1907). ''Land and freshwater mollusca of India, including South Arabia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Nepal, Burma, Pegu, Tenasserim, Malaya Peninsula, Ceylon and other islands of the Indian Ocean; Supplementary to Masers Theobald and Hanley's Conchologica Indica.'' Taylor and Francis, London. 2
page 184plate CXIII
* Bouchet P., Rocroi J.P., Hausdorf B., Kaim A., Kano Y., Nützel A., Parkhaev P., Schrödl M. & Strong E.E. (2017). Revised classification, nomenclator and typification of gastropod and monoplacophoran families. Malacologia. 61(1-2): 1-526

External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7596687

Distribution

Genera

Cladogram

References

Further reading

External links