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| The families of non-marine molluscs of Britain and Ireland (slugs, snails and mussels) |
Morphology. Snails, with a conspicuous, spiral, univalve shell.
The animal with one pair of tentacles only. Eyes at the bases of the tentacles.
The shell operculate; rising-spiral; 3 whorled, or 4 whorled; typically dextral; higher than wide; 3.5–5 mm high; approximately 1.5–1.75 mm wide; height about 2.5 x the width; high-spired and tapered gradually from the body whorl. The height of the spire about 0.5 x that of the shell. The spire truncate. The shell cylindrical; deeply sutured (between all the whorls). The body whorl moderately convex. The whorls of the spire moderately convex. The whorls neither shouldered nor keeled. The aperture with neither teeth nor calluses. The shell thin-lipped; thin and translucent; transmitting the pinkish colour of the animal; plain.
General biology, ecology. Semi-marine. Living around the high tide level, in driftwood, etc., and in salt-marshes.
Classification. Gastropoda; Prosobranchia.
Representation in Britain and Ireland. Truncatella (1, “Looping snail”).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2005 onwards. The families of non-marine molluscs of Britain and Ireland (slugs, snails and mussels). Version: 5th August 2019. delta-intkey.com’.