''Cylindrus obtusus'' 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 ...

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

in the family

Helicidae Helicidae is a large, diverse family of western Palaearctic, medium to large-sized, air-breathing land snails, sometimes called the "typical snails." It includes some of the largest European land snails, several species are common in anthropoge ...

, the typical snails. 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 ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. It lives on certain mountain tops in the Eastern Alps, in limestone habitats, e.g. the Dürrnstein, Ötscher and Gesäuse Mountains. It often lives crowded, in moss, in rock crevices. Draparnaud 1805 Pl

Ecology

The lifespan of ''Cylindrus obtusus'' is probably several years.Bisenberger A., Baumgartner G., Kleewein D. & Sattmann H. (1999). "Untersuchungen zur Populationsökologie von ''Cylindrus obtusus'' (Drap. 1805) (Pulmonata, Helicidae)". '' Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums Wien'' 101B: 453-464
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The dispersal rate of ''Cylindrus obtusus'' is about 3 cm per day.

Reproduction

''C. obtusus'' is one of the most prominent endemic

snail A snail is a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gas ...

species of the

Eastern Alps The Eastern Alps are usually defined as the area east of a line from Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine valley, up to the Splügen Pass at the Main chain of the Alps, Alpine divide, and down the Liro (Como), Liro River to Lake Como in the south. ...

. In the easternmost snail populations there is strong evidence for selfing (

self-fertilization Autogamy or self-fertilization refers to the Cell fusion, fusion of two gametes that come from one individual. Autogamy is predominantly observed in the form of self-pollination, a Reproduction, reproductive mechanism employed by many flowering pl ...

) as indicated by

microsatellite A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain Sequence motif, DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organ ...

data.Kruckenhauser L, Haring E, Tautscher B, Cadahía L, Zopp L, Duda M, Harl J, Sattmann H. Indication for selfing in geographically separated populations and evidence for Pleistocene survival within the Alps: the case of Cylindrus obtusus (Pulmonata: Helicidae). BMC Evol Biol. 2017 Jun 13;17(1):138. doi: 10.1186/s12862-017-0977-0. PMID 28610555; PMCID: PMC5470289 In eastern populations, compared to western populations, mucous gland structures employed in sexual reproduction are highly variable and deformed suggesting that in selfing organisms the functionality of these structures is reduced.

References

Cylindrus Endemic mollusca species of Austria Gastropods described in 1805 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Helicidae-stub