Family GLACIDORBIDAE

Museums

Regional Maps

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