Minute snail species found

Barna Páll-Gergely and Takahiro Asami from Shinshu University, Adrienne Jochum with the University and Natural History Museum of Bern, and András Hunyadi found shells of adult snails that are less than one millimeter in diameter in the limestone rocks in Guangxi Province in Southern China.

The seven new species belong to three genera Angustopila, Hypselostoma and Krobylos within the family Hypselostomatidae.

Apart from this major discovery, researchers also found six new smaller species of terrestrial snails known as Angustopila subelevata which is measured just a small fraction bigger than the A. dominikae where scientists now consider them both as “microsnails” or “micromolluscs”. Thus, the evolutionary relationships between these species, as well as the number of existing species are yet little known. “However, we hope that these results provide the taxonomic groundwork for future studies concerning the evolution of dwarfism in invertebrates”. It likely spends its life on the cliff walls.

Tiny Angustopila dominikae was identified by a single empty shell found below limestone cliffs in Guangxi, China.

Regarding this new snail discovery, researchers believe that extreme body sizes of organisms and creatures not only garner public attention but they also encourage interest of how these creatures can adapt to their habitats and environment.

“The world is full of small snails”, he says, “on land as well as in the seas or in the freshwater”.

“Investigating tiny-shelled land snails is important for assessing biodiversity and natural history as well as for establishing the foundation for studying the evolution of dwarfism in invertebrate animals”, they said.

The experts said it is unlikely land snails will be smaller than those discovered in China because the organs and cells would not be able to function in such minute proportions.

Publishing their findings on ZooKeys, the team also discovered slightly larger species such as the Angustopila subelevata measuring in at 0.87mm. A similar species, Hypselostoma socialis, is about the same size but has a different shell configuration.

Many details about how the snails live are still unknown. That honor goes only to ammonicera minortalis that ranges just from 0.32 mm to 0.46 mm in length.