Endodontidae is a taxonomic family of very small 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 ...

s and

slug Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less Terrestrial mollusc, terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced ...

s, terrestrial

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 ...

s in the superfamily Punctoidea. This family, which includes both snails and

s, appears to have once been much more diverse, but has declined, and is now endangered due to human activity.

Anatomy

In this family, the number of

haploid Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell (biology), cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for Autosome, autosomal and Pseudoautosomal region, pseudoautosomal genes. Here ''sets of chromosomes'' refers to the num ...

chromosome A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most import ...

s lies between 26 and 35 (according to the values in this table).Barker G. M.: Gastropods on Land: ''Phylogeny, Diversity and Adaptive Morphology''. in Barker G. M. (ed.):
The biology of terrestrial molluscs
'. CABI Publishing, Oxon, UK, 2001, . 1-146, cited pages: 139 and 142.

Distribution and conservation status

This family is found only in the

Pacific islands The Pacific islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are further categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Depending on the context, the term ''Pacific Islands'' may refer to one of several ...

. The family is critically endangered and on the verge of extinction, mainly because of habitat loss due to human development. On

American Samoa American Samoa is an Territories of the United States, unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States located in the Polynesia region of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. Centered on , it is southeast of the island count ...

, some species are in decline due to predation by introduced

fire ant Fire ants are several species of ants in the genus ''Solenopsis'', which includes over 200 species. ''Solenopsis'' are stinging ants, and most of their common names reflect this, for example, ginger ants and tropical fire ants. Many of the nam ...

s. On Rurutu in

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

the family is only known by subfossil shells. At least 18 endemic species are known of which four were described in 2009 and eight were described as new to science in 2013. Only one of them survived into the first half of the 20th century. Most of them became extinct due to the degradation of their habitats.Zimmermann G., Gargominy O. & Fontaine B. 2009. — Quatre espèces nouvelles d’Endodontidae (Mollusca, Pulmonata) éteints de Rurutu (Îles Australes, Polynésie française). Zoosystema 31 (4) : 791-805. (in French)

Genera

The family Endodontidae has no subfamilies. The following genera are recognised in the family Endodontidae: * '' Aaadonta'' * '' Anceyodonta'' * '' Australdonta'' * '' Beilania '' * '' Cookeconcha'' * '' Endodonta'' Albers, 1850 - type genus of the family Endodontidae * '' Gambiodonta'' * †'' Hebeispira'' * '' Kleokyphus'' * ''

Kondoconcha ''Kondoconcha'' is a genus of small air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Charopidae Charopidae is a Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic family (biology), family of small air-breathing land snails (and ...

'' * '' Libera'' * '' Mautodontha'' * '' Minidonta'' * '' Nesodiscus'' * '' Nesophila'' * '' Opanara'' * '' Orangia'' * '' Planudonta'' * '' Priceconcha'' * †'' Protoendodonta'' * '' Pseudolibera'' * '' Rhysoconcha'' * '' Rikitea'' * '' Ruatara'' * '' Taipidon'' * '' Thaumatodon'' * '' Zyzzyxdonta''

References

Gastropod families {{Endodontidae-stub