Australian Biological Resources Study

Australian Faunal Directory

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Family GLACIDORBIDAE


Compiler and date details

Brian J. Smith, Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston Shannon Reid and Winston F. Ponder, Australian Museum, Sydney

Introduction

This family of minute, freshwater, operculate pulmonates was proposed by Ponder (1986) and is so unusual that a new superfamily within the Basommatophora was proposed for it. Members of this family were placed erroneously in the Hydrobiidae (Meier-Brook & Smith 1976; Smith & Kershaw 1976). Apart from southern Australia, the family is also known from southern Chile (Meier-Brook & Smith 1976). In Australia, glacidorbids are known from streams and swamps in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, southeast South Australia and southern Western Australia (Ponder & Avern 2000) . One special feature is the very unusual radula, consisting of a large triangular central tooth with several small denticles on the margins and a pair of (probably non-functional) simple marginal teeth. The only species studied in detail, Glacidorbis hedleyi, feeds on the tissues of freshly dead animals, has a very simple alimentary tract and is a protandrous hermaphoridite that broods its young (Ponder 1986).

The family is characterized by the minute sized, planispiral shell and the spiral, horny operculum.

 

General References

Bunn, S.E., Davies, P.M. & Edward, D.H. 1989. The association of Glacidorbis occidentalis Bunn and Stoddart, 1983 with intermittently–flowing, forest streams in south Western Australia. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 10: 25-34

Bunn, S.E. & Stoddart, J.A. 1983. A new species of the prosobranch gastropod Glacidorbis and its implications for the biogeography of South Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum 11(1): 49-57

Meier-Brook, C. & Smith, B.J. 1975. Glacidorbis Iredale, 1943, a genus of freshwater prosobranch with a Tasmanian-Southeast Australian-South Andean distribution. Archiv für Molluskenkunde 106: 191-198

Ponder, W.F. 1986. Glacidorbidae (Glacidorbacea : Basommatophora), new family and superfamily of operculate freshwater gatropods. Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology 87: 53-83

Ponder, W.F. & Avern, G.J. 2000. The Glacidorbidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Heterobranchia) of Australia. Records of the Australian Museum 52(3): 307-353

Smith, B.J. 1973. A new species of snail from Lake Pedder, Tasmania, possibly belonging to the family Valvatidae. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 2: 429-434

Smith, B.J. 1979. A new species of the genus Glacidorbis (?Hydrobiidae : Gastropoda) from Great Lake, Tasmania. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 4: 121-127

Stanisic, J. 1998. Family Glacidorbidae. 1075 in Beesley, P.L., Ross, G.J.B. & Wells, A. (eds). Mollusca: The Southern Synthesis. Fauna of Australia. Melbourne : CSIRO Publishing Vol. 5(Part B) pp. vi–viii, 565–1234.

Starobogatov, Y.I. 1988. On the systematic position of the genus Glacidorbis (Gastropoda incertae sedis). [In Russian, with English summary]. pp. 78-84 in Starobogatov, Y.I. (ed.). Systematics and fauna of Gastropoda, Bivalvia and Cephalopoda. Proceedings of the Zoological Institute, Leningrad 187: 1-203

 

History of changes

Note that this list may be incomplete for dates prior to September 2013.
Published As part of group Action Date Action Type Compiler(s)
12-Feb-2010 (import)