''Physa fontinalis'',

common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often con ...

the common bladder snail, is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of air-breathing

freshwater snail Freshwater snails are gastropod mollusks that live in fresh water. There are many different families. They are found throughout the world in various habitats, ranging from ephemeral pools to the largest lakes, and from small seeps and springs t ...

, an aquatic

gastropod Gastropods (), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, freshwater, and fro ...

mollusc Mollusca is a phylum of protostome, protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant taxon, extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum ...

in the family Physidae. The shells of species in the genus ''Physa'' are left-handed or

sinistral Sinistral and dextral, in some scientific fields, are the two types of chirality ("handedness") or relative direction. The terms are derived from the Latin words for "left" (''sinister'') and "right" (''dexter''). Other disciplines use different ...

Description

The shell is 7 to 12 mm high and 4 to 7 mm wide. The spiral has four to five whorls ( the last of which forms more than three-quarters of the shell height) and the apex is rounded. The shell is very thin-walled, translucent, shiny and is a pale horn colour. The aperture is wide and oval, and the mouth edge is very thin and brittle. The body color is brown to black. The edges of the mantle extend as finger-like lobes over the exterior of the shell. The tentacles are long, slender and cylindrical, with the eyes at the base. The foot is long and thin. Bladder snails are hermaphrodites.

Ecology

This species is an opportunist inhabiting streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, springs, canals and irrigation ditches. It occurs in both nutrient-poor and richly vegetated habitats. It may be found in (moderately) polluted water bodies.

Distribution

This species has a wide distribution in the western

Palaearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

but confusion with similar species makes the eastern limits of its distribution uncertain. The range is probably Eurasian Boreo-temperate. Some ‘species’ found in North America may be

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

in which case the range could be Circumpolar Boreo-temperate. This species is found in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, Horsák M., Juřičková L., Beran L., Čejka T. & Dvořák L. (2010). "Komentovaný seznam měkkýšů zjištěných ve volné přírodě České a Slovenské republiky. nnotated list of mollusc species recorded outdoors in the Czech and Slovak Republics. ''

Malacologica Bohemoslovaca ''Malacologica Bohemoslovaca'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering all aspects of malacology. It was published by the Slovak Academy of Sciences since 2005. It is published by the Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of ...

'', Suppl. 1: 1-37
PDF

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

and others.

Threats

''Physa fontinalis'' is a

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

species.IUCN Red list
/ref> but is included on National and Regional Red Lists.

References

External links

''Physa fontinalis''
at

Animalbase AnimalBase is a project brought to life in 2004 and is maintained by the University of Göttingen, Germany. The goal of the AnimalBase project is to digitize early zoological literature, provide copyright-free open access to zoological works, and p ...

taxonomy, short description, distribution, biology, status (threats), images
Identification of Freshwater and Brackish-water Snails of Britain and Ireland
Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland online manual
''Physa fontinalis''
at

National Center for Biotechnology Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The NCBI is lo ...

(NCBI) {{Taxonbar, from=Q1549698 Physidae Gastropods described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus