Bulimus novoseelandicus Pfeiffer, 1861

Brook, Fred J. & Ablett, Jonathan D., 2019, Type material of land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) described from New Zealand by taxonomists in Europe and North America between 1830 and 1934, and the history of research on the New Zealand land snail fauna from 1824 to 1917, Zootaxa 4697 (1), pp. 1-117 : 25

Bulimus novoseelandicus Pfeiffer, 1861

Pfeiffer, 1861: Malakozoologische Blätter, 8: 149.

Type material: Listed by Suter (1913b: 768) as being in the ‘ K.K. Hofmuseum, Vienna’, but not found during a search of the collection at Naturhistorisches Museum Wien in 2014 (Anita Eschner pers. comm.). As noted in the Introduction (above), the type material may have gone to the Pommersches Museum, Stettin [= Szczecin], after Pfeiffer’s death in 1877, in which case it has probably been lost or destroyed .

Type locality: ‘Wangaruru [= Whangaruru] bei der Bay of Islands’ ( Pfeiffer 1861: 149) .

Remarks: There are no published illustrations of the type material. The original description was based on one or more specimens obtained by Ferdinand von Hochstetter during his visit to New Zealand in 1858–1859. Pfeiffer (1861: 149) listed shell dimensions of “Long. 77, diam. 31 mill. Ap. intus 35 mill. longa, 15 lata.”

Current Taxonomy: Treated as a junior subjective synonym of Placostylus (Maoristylus) hongii (Lesson, 1830) by Powell (1938: 144, 1979: 350). Pfeiffer’s taxon is a colour variant of hongii , in which the outer lip and interior of the aperture are white or cream-coloured, instead of orange or red.