Orcula: Brief Summary
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Orcula is a genus of land snails in the family Orculidae. It is the type genus of the family.
These snails have ovate-cylindrical shells generally measuring about 5 to 10 millimeters.
The center of diversity of the genus is in the Alps. Some species live in alpine climates. In general, the snails occur in wet forested habitat and boulder fields on limestone substrates.
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Distribution
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Most species have limited distributions in the Alps (mainly Austria). Orcula dolium is widely distributed in Central Europe, in the Alps (eastern France, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Northern Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Northern Croatia, and Slovenia) and the Western Carpathians (Northern Hungary, Slovakia, Eastern Czech Republic). The Croatian records of Orcula dolium and Orcula gularis (Stossich 1880, 1899, Zimmermann, 1932) have not been verified by recent investigations.
Our knowledge of the distribution of Orcula dolium is distorted due to misidentified material. Probably all reports of this species (living and fossil) from Spain (e.g. Llamas et al. 1995) refer to Orculella aragonica (see Arrébola et al. 2012). Italian (Toscana) records (Zanchetta et al. 2004, 2006) refer to a yet unknown Orculella species (see photo in Zanchetta et al. 2006). Damjanov and Likharev (1975) reported Orcula dolium from the Balkan Peninsula, South, Central and West Europe, the Crimea, Western Ukraine, Central Asia, Tunisia, Ethiopia and northen Iran. This distribution is much broader than that of Orcula dolium and probably refers to the distribution of the family Orculidae. Likharev and Rammelmejer (1952) and Sysoev and Schileyko (2009) speculated that Orcula dolium occurs in Ukraine. This supposition has been included in distribution maps (Welter-Schultes, 2012), but to date the taxon’s occurrence in Ukraine has not been verified data (Balashov and Gural-Sverlova 2012). Soós (1943) mentioned that during careful collections around Munkács (Mukachevo, southwest Ukraine), Traxler was not able to find the species.
Orcula dolium was more widely distributed during the Pleistocene. The northernmost localities were published by Ložek (2006) (Czech Republic, ca, 30 km north of Prague) and Moine et al. (2005) (Germany, northern Baden-Württemberg). The southernmost locality was reported by Mitrović (2007) from the Serbian Kisiljevo.
Sacco (1897) described Orcula dolium var. pliopedemontana from the middle Pliocene sediments at Ceresole d’Alba (Italy: ‘’Villafranchiano’’). The description is unfortunately insufficient and the taxonomic position of this form is uncertain (Ferrero-Mortara et al. 1984, Pilsbry 1922). More recently, Ciangherotti et al. (2007) made no mention of the species from the same sediment layers.
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- Barna Páll-Gergely, Tamás Deli, Atanas Irikov, Josef Harl
- bibliographic citation
- Páll-Gergely B, Deli T, Irikov A, Harl J (2013) Subgeneric division of the genus Orcula Held 1837 with remarks on Romanian orculid data (Gastropoda, Pulmonata, Orculidae) ZooKeys 301: 25–49
- author
- Barna Páll-Gergely
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- Tamás Deli
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- Atanas Irikov
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- Josef Harl
