The Aciculidae are a

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

of small

land snail A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to the sea snails and freshwater snails. ''Land snail'' is the common name for terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have gastropod shell, shel ...

s that have opercula (an operculum is a little door that closes the shell when the animal retracts into it). In other words, Aciculidae are terrestrial operculate

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 ...

s. Even though Aciculidae are land snails, they live in rather wet conditions, among mosses and dead leaves and they have sometimes been described as " winkles come ashore".

Taxonomy

Previously this family was placed in the infraorder

Littorinimorpha Littorinimorpha is a large order of snails, gastropods, consisting primarily of sea snails ( marine species), but also including some freshwater snails ( limnic species) and land snails ( terrestrial species).Bouchet P. & Rocroi J.-P. (Ed.); Fr� ...

, in the suborder

Hypsogastropoda Hypsogastropoda is a clade containing marine gastropods within the clade Caenogastropoda.MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Hypsogastropoda. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=tax ...

in the order Sorbeoconcha in the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Ponder & Lindberg (1997). The family Aciculidae is in the informal group Architaenioglossa, belonging to the

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

Caenogastropoda Caenogastropoda is a taxonomic subclass of molluscs in the class Gastropoda. It is a large diverse group which are mostly sea snails and other marine gastropod mollusks, but also includes some freshwater snails and some land snails. The subcla ...

, (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005). This family has no subfamilies according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005. In the Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet et al., 2017), it was placed under

Cyclophoroidea Cyclophoroidea is a superfamily of land snails with an operculum, terrestrial gastropods within the order Architaenioglossa, that belongs to the subclass Caenogastropoda.Bouchet, P.; Rosenberg, G.; Gofas, S. (2015). Cyclophoroidea Gray, 1847. ...

Genera

Genera within the family Aciculidae include: * ''

Acicula Acicula (: aciculum) are strong, stout internal chaeta A chaeta or cheta (; ) is a chitinous bristle or seta found on annelid worms, although the term is also frequently used to describe similar structures in other invertebrates such as art ...

'' W. Hartmann, 1821 - the needle snail, type genus * '' Menkia'' Boeters, E. Gittenberger & Subai, 1985 * '' Platyla'' Moquin-Tandon, 1856 * ''

Renea The Department of Neutralization of Armed Elements () commonly known by its acronym RENEA, is the main Albanian counter-terrorist and critical incident response unit. The force was constituted in the early 1990s in response to the growing crime ...

'' Nevill, 1880 * '' Cretatortulosa gignens'' 2020

References

* Horst Janus, 1965. ''The Young Specialist Looks at Land and Freshwater Molluscs'', Burke, London * Egorov, R. V., 2009, Kladovaja rakovin Rossii reasure of Russian shells Supplement 3. A review of the genera of the recent terrestrial pectinibranch molluscs (synopsis mainly based on published data). Part II, Littoriniformes. Hainesiidae, Aciculidae, Cyclophoridae, Craspedopomatidae. Moscow. 58 pp * Gastropod families Taxa named by John Edward Gray {{Aciculidae-stub