Partulidae is 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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

s in the

superfamily SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...

Pupilloidea Pupilloidea is a superfamily of small and very small air-breathing land snails, terrestrial gastropods in the infraorder '' Pupilloidei''. They are diverse in morphology, habitat, and ecological roles. Description They are characterized by the ...

.MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Partulidae Pilsbry, 1900. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=162663 on 2021-12-12 The family 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 ...

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

islands.Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed at http://animaldiversity.org. ITIS Standard Report Page: Partulidae
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Genera

The Partulidae are divided into five genera:Cowie, R.H. (1992). Evolution and Extinction of Partulidae, Endemic Pacific Island Land Snails. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 335, No. 1274 (Feb. 29, 1992), pp. 167-191. * '' Eua'' has four species, confined to

Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...

and

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

. * '' Palaopartula'' Pilsbry, 1909- has three species, restricted to the

Palau Palau, officially the Republic of Palau, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the western Pacific Ocean. The Republic of Palau consists of approximately 340 islands and is the western part of the Caroline Islands ...

. * '' Partula'' Pilsbry, 1909 - has about 100 species, distributed from

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

to the

Society Islands The Society Islands ( , officially ; ) are an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean that includes the major islands of Tahiti, Mo'orea, Moorea, Raiatea, Bora Bora and Huahine. Politically, they are part of French Polynesia, an overseas country ...

. * ''

Samoana ''Samoana'' is a genus of tropical, air-breathing, land snails, Terrestrial molluscs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs in the family Partulidae.MolluscaBase eds. (2022). MolluscaBase. ''Samoana'' Pilsbry, 1909. Accessed through: World Reg ...

'' Pilsbry, 1909 - has about 23 species, distributed in

Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...

and the

Mariana Islands The Mariana Islands ( ; ), also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12th and 21st pa ...

. * ''

Sphendone ''Sphendone insolita'', common name the Palau rock snail, is a species of air-breathing tropical land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod in the family Partulidae. This species is endemic to Palau. Taxonomy and naming John Slapcinsky and ...

'' has a single species from the Palau. This

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

shows the phylogenic relationships of genera in the family Partulidae:Lee T., Burch J. B., Coote T., Pearce-Kelly P., Hickman C., Meyer J.-Y. & Foighil D. O. (18 August 2009). "Moorean tree snail survival revisited: a multi-island genealogical perspective". ''

BMC Evolutionary Biology ''BMC Ecology and Evolution'' (since January 2021), previously ''BMC Evolutionary Biology'' (2001–2020), is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering all fields of evolutionary biology, including phylogenetics and palaeontology ...

'' 9: 204.

Synonyms

* ''Aega'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Samoana (Marquesana)'' Pilsbry, 1909 represented as ''Samoana'' Pilsbry, 1909 * ''Astraea'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Clytia'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Echo'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula (Leptopartula)'' Pilsbry, 1909: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Evadne'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Samoana'' Pilsbry, 1909 * ''Harmonia'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula (Marianella)'' Pilsbry, 1909: synonym of v * ''Helena'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Latia'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Samoana (Marquesana)'' Pilsbry, 1909 represented as ''Samoana'' Pilsbry, 1909 (unavailable; a junior homonym of Latia Gray, 1850 atiidae * ''Marianna'' Pilsbry, 1909: synonym of ''Partula (Marianella)'' Pilsbry, 1909: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Matata'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Nenia'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Oenone'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Pasithea'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821(junior synonym) * ''Rennellia'' Clench, 1941: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 (junior synonym) * ''Scilistylus'' Iredale, 1941: synonym of''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821 * ''Sterope'' Hartman, 1881: synonym of ''Partula (Melanesica)'' Pilsbry, 1909: synonym of ''Partula'' A. Férussac, 1821

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 30 (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.

Significance

The Partulidae represent a significant species radiation and were important in the development of modern evolutionary studies through the work of Henry Crampton in the early 20th century and later by

Bryan Clarke Bryan Campbell Clarke (24 June 1932 – 27 February 2014) was a British Professor of genetics, latterly emeritus at the University of Nottingham. Clarke is particularly noted for his work on apostatic selection (which is a term he coine ...

, James Murray and Michael Johnson.

Status

Most Partulidae species have declined since 1974 and a very large proportion are extinct. The main threat to their survival has been the introduction of the predatory snail ''

Euglandina rosea ''Euglandina rosea'', the rosy wolfsnail or cannibal snail, is a species of medium-sized to large predatory air-breathing land snail, a carnivorous terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Spiraxidae.MolluscaBase eds. (2020). Mollus ...

''.

References

* Gerlach J. (2016). Icons of evolution: Pacific Island tree-snails of the family Partulidae. Phelsuma Press.

External links

* Partulidae evolution, diversity and conservatio
Partula Pages

Bouchet, P. & Rocroi, J.-P. (2005). Classification and nomenclator of gastropod families. Malacologia. 47 (1-2): 1-397
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