Family HELICODISCIDAE H.B. Baker, 1927

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Introduction

This is a small family with a disjunct distribution of two genera from North America and one genus from Indonesia, Philippines, New Guinea, Solomon Islands and northern Australia. The Australian occurrence was recognized only recently by Solem (1984); the species was placed previously, either in the Charopidae or Punctidae (Iredale 1937). The Australian species is found under rocks in the hot dry areas of northern and central Australia.

The Australian representative possesses a minute, discoid shell with a thickened lip and an expansion of the parietal section which forms a shield across the aperture.

General References

Iredale, T. 1937. An annotated check list of the land shells of South and Central Australia. South Australian Naturalist 18: 6-59 [30 Sept. 1937]

Solem, A. 1984. Small land snails from Northern Australia. III. Species of Helicodiscidae and Charopidae. Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia 6(3–4): 155-179

Solem, A. 1989. Non-camaenid land snails of the Kimberley and Northern Territory, Australia. I. Systematics, affinities and ranges. Invertebrate Taxonomy 2(4): 455-604

Solem, A. 1998. Family Helicodiscidae. 1100 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.

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