''Zonitoides patuloides'' is a species 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 patuloides (Pilsbry, 1895). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1352292 on 2023-12-09

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 ...

attains 2.5 mm (0.10 in), its diameter 5.1 mm (0.20 in). (Original description) The shell has about the size and form of ''Pyramidula striatella'' (J. G. Anthony, 1840) (synonym of '' Discus whitneyi'' (Newcomb, 1864) ). It is light green and hardly transparent. The shell is irregularly but closely rib-striate above, below and in the umbilicus. The first 1½

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 are smooth. The 4½ whorls are slowly increasing, convex, with impressed sutures. The

last whorl The body whorl is part of the morphology of the 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. In gastropods In gastropods, the b ...

is rather tubular, rounded at periphery and below. 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 ...

has about the size of the umbilicus. It is round-lunate, flattened above. The

lip The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...

is simple. The upper margin is flattened down and arched forward, as in ''Selenites'' or ''Gastrodonta elliotti'' and retracted at insertion. The umbilicus is large, showing all the whorls very plainly. It is much smaller than ''Gastrodonta elliotti'' Redf., with far larger, open umbilicus and heavier sculpture, recalling a Pyramidula.Pilsbry, H. A. (1895). New forms of American Zonitidae and Helicidae. The Nautilus. 9(2): 14-16
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Distribution

This species is found on the

Thunderhead Mountain Thunderhead Mountain is a mountain in the west-central part of the Great Smoky Mountains, located in the southeastern United States. Rising along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, the mountain dominates the western Smokies. The A ...

along the border between

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

and

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

, USA on mountainsides and ravines on moist leaves.

References

* InvertEBase. (2018). Authority files of U.S. and Canadian land and freshwater mollusks developed for the InvertEBase (InvertEBase.org) project.

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q3732404 patuloides Gastropods described in 1895