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Introduced land snail Cepaea nemoralis (Gastropoda:
Helicidae) in Eastern Europe: spreading history and the shell
colouration variability
Nina Gural-Sverlova, Roman Egorov, Oksana Kruglova, Natalia
Kovalevich & Roman Gural
The available data on the present distribution of Cepaea
nemoralis in Ukraine, Belarus and the European part of Russia,
the history and possible ways of penetration of this species into
various parts of Eastern Europe, as well as the colour and banding
polymorphism of its shells are analyzed. It has been suggested that
the process of rapid spreading of C. nemoralis in the three
compared Eastern European countries began at approximately the same
time (late 20th – early 21st centuries) and that it may be caused by
active and practically uncontrolled importation of seedlings from
other European countries, as well as by global climate change, which
can contribute to better survival of snails outside their natural
range. Despite the possible initial limitation of the phenotypic and
genetic diversity associated with the accidental transfer of a limited
number of individuals, in the Eastern European colonies, in general, a
fairly large variety of the inherited traits of the shell colouration
remains. This concerns, first of all, the polymorphism in the shell
ground colour (yellow, pink, less often brown) and the main variants
of the shell banding (unbanded, mid-banded, five-banded, less often
three-banded).
Keywords: terrestrial mollusc, grove snail, polymorphism, Belarus,
Russia, Ukraine
Gural-Sverlova N., Egorov R., Kruglova O., Kovalevich N. & Gural
R., 2021: Introduced land snail Cepaea nemoralis (Gastropoda:
Helicidae) in Eastern Europe: spreading history and the shell
colouration variability. – Malacologica Bohemoslovaca, 20: 75–91. https://doi.org/10.5817/MaB2021-20-75
Publication date: 27. 9. 2021. PDF
(15.4 MB)
Copyright © 2021 Published by Department of Botany and
Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University