Galba Schrank, 1803

Aksenova, Olga V., Vinarski, Maxim V., Itagaki, Tadashi, Ohari, Yuma, Oshida, Tatsuo, Kim, Sang Ki, Lee, Jin Hee, Kondakov, Alexander V., Khrebtova, Irina S., Soboleva, Alena A., Travina, Oksana V., Sokolova, Svetlana E., Palatov, Dmitry M., Bespalaya, Yulia V., Vikhrev, Ilya V., Gofarov, Mikhail Yu. & Bolotov, Ivan N., 2024, Taxonomy and trans-Beringian biogeography of the pond snails (Gastropoda: Lymnaeidae) of East Asia: an integrative view, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 201 (4), pp. 1-24 : 12

Genus Galba Schrank, 1803

Schrank 1803: 262.

Type species: Buccinum truncatulum O.F. Müller, 1774 (by subsequent designation).

Diagnosis: Shell small (typically does not exceed 10 mm in length), turriculate or ovate-conical (sometimes almost ovoid), with convex or almost stepped whorls. Prostate with a single fold inside. Penis simple (without a fixing swelling). Penis sheath typically compact and short; in most species it is much shorter than the praeputium.

Species richness: The actual number of species in the genus is difficult to define, because many nominal species (especially numerous representatives of Galba occurring in North America) have yet not been studied by an integrative taxonomic approach (see Burch 1989, Johnson et al. 2013, Alda et al. 2021). Vázquez et al. (2018) wrote that 21 species in North America correspond to the group of small-shelled Galba : ‘Here again, these numbers are perhaps overestimated due to possible systematic confusions in the absence of molecular studies’. In the studied region, two native species, Galba truncatula (O.F. Müller, 1774) and Galba sibirica (Westerlund, 1885) , have been recorded ( Dybowski 1912, Itagaki 1956, Bogatov and Zatravkin 1990, Prozorova 1998, Vinarski and Kantor 2016). Galba sibirica has not been assessed by an integrative taxonomic approach, and its taxonomic status requires clarification. We did not include this species in our final checklist of the East Asian and Alaskan lymnaeids, but we provide illustrations of its shell and copulatory organ herein ( Figs 3C, 4B). In contrast, G. truncatula ( Figs 3D, 4C) is absent from our regional library of DNA sequences and probably does not occur in the study region. All published records of this species probably represent misidentification of G. pacifica . Two non-indigenous species, G. humilis and G. schirazensis , are known from Japan ( Ohari et al. 2020, Saito 2022).

Distribution: The Americas, Eurasia, and Africa.