Milax antipodarum Pfeiffer, 1855

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 : 67

Milax antipodarum Pfeiffer, 1855

Pfeiffer [in Gray & Pfeiffer], 1855. Catalogue of Pulmonata or air-breathing Mollusca in the collection of the British Museum. Part 1: 177.

Type material: Two syntypes, formerly in the British Museum (Pfeiffer [in Gray & Pfeiffer 1855]: 177; Cockerell 1891: 340); not located by Barker (1999: 90), not found in NHMUK collections in 2018, whereabouts unknown.

Type locality: ‘New Zealand’ (Pfeiffer [in Gray & Pfeiffer 1855]: 177).

Remarks: The original description did not state where in New Zealand the type material was collected, or by whom. There are no published illustrations of type material. This taxon was originally thought to be native to New Zealand (e.g., Hutton 1880: 26, 1884b: 205). Musson (1891: 886) implied that it could be adventive, and Hedley & Suter (1893: 665 —as Amalia antipoda ) listed it as an introduced species. Suter (1913b: 1072 —as A. antipoda ) noted it was related to Limax gagates Draparnaud, 1805 , and it was listed as a junior synonym of Milax gagates (Draparnaud) by Powell (1979: 450) and Barker (1979: 420, 1982: 178, 1999: 87). Milax gagates ( Draparnaud, 1801) is thought to be native to coastal areas of the western Mediterranean, including North Africa, and possibly the Azores and Canary Islands. It has a wide adventive distribution including northeastern Europe, St Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, South Africa, North and South America, Bermuda, Sri Lanka, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and several islands in Polynesia ( Wiktor 1987; Barker 1999: 89; Herbert 2010). It was first recorded in New Zealand in the Bay of Islands in 1840 (as Limax fuliginosus Gould, 1852 ), and was recorded by Barker (1999: 89, map 18) as being widely distributed in modified habitats in the North and South islands, and present also on Chatham Island.

Current Taxonomy: Treated as a subjective junior synonym of Milax gagates ( Draparnaud, 1801) by Powell (1979) and Barker (1979, 1982, 1999), albeit without examination of type material.