Pupa muscorum var. pratensis Clessin, 1871

Haase, Martin, Meng, Stefan & Horsák, Michal, 2021, Tracking parallel adaptation of shell morphology through geological times in the land snail genus Pupilla (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora: Pupillidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 191 (3), pp. 720-720 : 720-

Pupa muscorum var. pratensis Clessin, 1871

Pupilla pratensis has been described as a variety of P. muscorum ( Pupa muscorum var. pratensis ) from the damp fen meadows of Dinkelscherben near Augsburg (Bavaria, Germany) ( Clessin, 1871). Since von Proschwitz et al. (2009), P. pratensis has had independent species status (see also Horsák et al., 2010), but has been synonymized with P. alpicola ( Charpentier, 1837) shortly thereafter ( Nekola et al., 2015). Here, it is regarded as a lowland morphotype of the latter. The whereabouts of Clessin’s syntype series is not known. Von Proschwitz et al. (2009) figured a specimen collected by Clessin at Dinkelscherben from the Westerlund collection of the Gothenburg Natural History Museum as a syntype. However, as it is not dated, this status is doubtful (T. von Proschwitz, pers. comm.). Clessin’s collection in the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart contains a sample of P. muscorum from the type locality Dinkelscherben collected by Clessin in 1880 (SMNS-ZI0120652). Among 154 shells, we identified nine shells of P. pratensis not sorted out by Clessin. Five of these nine shells contain the dried soft body and from one of these, we were able to sequence the ITS2 fragment confirming the species identity. Because of the eventful taxonomic history of this taxon, we decided to define P. pratensis unambiguously by designation of a neotype from this series ( Fig. 11 ), which has the following data:

Staatliches Museum für Tierkunde Stuttgart, SMNS-ZI 0138339 [remaining specimens: SMNS-ZI0138340 (DNA of sequenced specimen), SMNS-ZI0138341 (7 shells)]

Type locality: Dinkelscherben, leg. Clessin 1880.

Height, 3.58 mm; width, 2.00 mm.

For a description and a justification to consider this name a junior synonym of P. alpicola see the Material section and our present comparisons.

Figures

Figure 11. Pupa muscorum var. pratensis. Series of four shells from type locality Dinkelscherben near Augsburg (Germany) in frontal and lateral view. A, neotype SMNS-ZI0138339. B–D, SMNS-ZI0138341.