''Amastra inflata'' 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

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 ...

, a

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth, as opposed to extraterrestrial. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on o ...

pulmonate Pulmonata or pulmonates is an informal group (previously an order, and before that, a subclass) of snails and slugs characterized by the ability to breathe air, by virtue of having a pallial lung instead of a gill, or gills. The group inclu ...

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

Amastridae Amastridae is a Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic family (biology), family of small, air-breathing, land snails, Terrestrial animal, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Pupilloidea.MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Amast ...

Description

The length of the shell attains 16.5 mm, its diameter 10 mm The shell is imperforate, conic-globose, and rather coarsely striate. It is whitish in color, covered with a black epidermis that is worn off, forming a broad band below the suture. The

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

is swollen, culminating in a short, acute cone. There are 5½

whorl A whorl ( or ) is an individual circle, oval, volution or equivalent in a whorled pattern, which consists of a spiral or multiple concentric objects (including circles, ovals and arcs). In nature File:Photograph and axial plane floral diagra ...

s, with the last three being very turgid. The

body whorl The body whorl is part of the morphology (biology), morphology of the gastropod shell, shell in those gastropod mollusks that possess a coiled shell. The term is also sometimes used in a similar way to describe the shell of a cephalopod mollusk ...

is approximately as long as the spire. The

aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

is oblique and sinuate-oval, white on the interior. The columellar fold is subtransverse and ascends steeply. The

peristome Peristome (from the Greek language, Greek ''peri'', meaning 'around' or 'about', and ''stoma'', 'mouth') is an anatomical feature that surrounds an opening to an organ or structure. Some plants, fungi, and shelled gastropods have peristomes. In mo ...

is unexpanded and labiate on the inner edge. The columellar margin is callous, dilated, and adnate. The shell's shape varies widely. The embryonic whorls are nearly smooth, bearing only fine growth striae, similar to ''

Amastra decorticata ''Amastra decorticata'' is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial animal, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Amastridae. Description The length of the shell attains 16 mm, its diameter 8.5 mm The shel ...

''. On the later whorls, the wrinkles become coarser and more irregular, occasionally intersected by faint spiral lines in some individuals. The shell color is a rich chestnut with orange hues, overlaid by a very thin, darker outer layer of almost chocolate-brown. This layer is often worn away on the wrinkles and is absent below the periphery in front of the aperture. Behind the

lip The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...

, the color darkens to deep chocolate or blackish, and a darker peripheral band is sometimes visible. A denuded subsutural belt, mentioned by Pfeiffer, appears on some shells, both in dead and a few living specimens. Beneath the colored cuticle, the shell's substance is fleshy-whitish in the body whorl but typically darker in the spire, giving it a purplish-brown appearance. Immature shells are very ventricose and exhibit a distinct, sharp peripheral angle that persists through the fifth whorl. The last two whorls are prominently swollen below the suture, occasionally developing a beaded appearance, which emerges as late as the last half of the final whorl. Mature shells are generally imperforate, though younger specimens may remain perforate until reaching about 10 mm in length, with 4½ to 5 whorls.

Distribution

This species is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, occurring on

Oahu Oahu (, , sometimes written Oahu) is the third-largest and most populated island of the Hawaiian Islands and of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital, Honolulu, is on Oahu's southeast coast. The island of Oahu and the uninhabited Northwe ...

island.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q131466206 inflata Gastropods described in 1856