''Zonitoides apertus'' 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 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 ...

, 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

Gastrodontidae Gastrodontidae is a family of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Gastrodontoidea (according to the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005).MolluscaBase eds. (2020). MolluscaBas ...

.MolluscaBase eds. (2023). MolluscaBase. Zonitoides apertus Pilsbry & Hirase, 1904. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1331915 on 2023-12-06

Description

The altitude of the

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

is 2.1 mm (0.08 in), its diameter 4.7 mm (0.18 in). (Original description) The shell is depressed and has a wide, open umbilicus. 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 lightly convex. Its color is pale greenish corneous-brown when fresh. "Dead" shells are light brown. The glossy surface is closely, deeply and irregularly striate throughout except the first

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 ...

which is nearly smooth. There are no spiral striae. The shell contains four whorls. These are slightly increasing at first. 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 much wider, double the width of the penultimate whorl. They are rounded at the periphery. 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, oval-lunate, decidedly wider than high. 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 simple. Pilsbry, H. A. & Hirase, Y. (1904). Descriptions of new land shells of the Japanese Empire. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 56: 616–638
/ref>

Distribution

This species occurs in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

References

* H. B. Baker, 1963. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 115 (8): 237 * Minato, H. (1988). A systematic and bibliographic list of the Japanese land snails. H. Minato, Shirahama, 294 pp., 7 pls.

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q1520828 apertus Gastropods described in 1904