Australian Biological Resources Study

Australian Faunal Directory

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Family LYMNAEIDAE


Compiler and date details

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

Introduction

This worldwide family of freshwater snails prefers mainly slow or non-flowing waters and thrive in eutrophic conditions. A revision of the family by Hubendick (1951) reorganised the many available names of the Australian fauna to three species. This was later restricted to two by Boray & McMichael (1961). Hubendick (1951) referred most of the species in the family to the genus Lymnaea. The present work follows Inaba (1969) in recognising several genera for the family, characterized by distinct shell and anatomical differences and different chromosome numbers and mitotic figures.

Some species of this family are the vectors for the sheep liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, making the family of major economic importance (Boray, 1998). The potential for exotic species of lymnaeids to be serious disease vectors has been examined by many authors (Boray 1978; Kruglov 1986).

The family is characterized by the thin, fragile, dextrally coiled shell, with wide aperture, a large fleshy foot and wide, triangular tentacles. The animal is dextral, has a simple mantle and lacks a pseudobranch.

 

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)