''Mirus proletarius'' 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 ...

s, 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 ...

in the subfamily Eninae of the family

Enidae Enidae is a family of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks.MolluscaBase eds. (2020). MolluscaBase. Enidae B. B. Woodward, 1903 (1880). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies ...

.MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Mirus Albers, 1850. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1450225 on 2 December 2024

Description

The shell is in length, in diameter, is elongated, with flattened lips. (Original description in Latin) The shell is compressedly umbilicate, oblong-turrite, somewhat solid, very finely granulated under a lens, slightly glossy, and horn-brown in color. 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 elongated and somewhat blunt. There are 7 convex

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

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 ...

barely exceeding one-third of the total shell length, slightly ascending anteriorly, and somewhat compressed at the base. 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 slightly oblique and oblong. 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 ...

has a white border, with the margins close together. The right margin is expanded and strongly arched at the top, while the columellar margin is widened and open. This species was first described in 1855 by German

conchologist Conchology, from Ancient Greek κόγχος (''kónkhos''), meaning "cockle (bivalve), cockle", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is the study of mollusc shells. Conchology is one aspect of malacology, the study of mollus ...

Ludwig Karl Georg Pfeiffer Ludwig Karl Georg Pfeiffer, also known as Louis Pfeiffer (4 July 1805 – 2 October 1877), was a German physician, botany, botanist and conchology, conchologist. Early life, education and medical career Pfeiffer was born in Cassel, the eldest so ...

Distribution

''M. proletarius'' is endemic to

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

.Naggs, F. & Raheem, D. (2000). Land snail diversity in Sri Lanka. An illustrated guide prepared for the launch of the Darwin Initiative programme. Photography by Harold Taylor. The Natural History Museum, London. pages i-xiii, 1-203. 246 coloured plates. ISBN 0565091514 (printed version), ISBN 0565091565 (compact disc)., available online at https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/tropical-land-snails/taxa.dsml

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q106284027 Enidae Gastropods described in 1855 Gastropods of Sri Lanka Taxa named by Ludwig Karl Georg Pfeiffer