Biodiversity of extant snails (Gastropoda, Mollusca) in the Pliocene Mountain Spur Natural Reserve (Northern Apennine, Italy)

Abstract

To date, there is a substantial lack of information about gastropods from the Tuscan-Emilian Apennine in the north of Italy, notwithstanding the availability of detailed and comprehensive literature on this molluscan class. We present a gastropod fauna from the Natural Reserve of the Pliocene Mountain Spur: to our knowledge, this is the first investigation of the extant gastropod fauna in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennine and one of the few in the Apennine's mountain chain as a whole.We describe a gastropod fauna comprised by 25 species, belonging to 18 genera and 10 families: the general figure which is emerging is an assemblage of European and Mediterranean-European species, with a single Asian contribution. Several shells were collected as embedded in sandy-clayey soils and showed fossilisation traces: therefore, we regard these shells as subfossil samples. Namely, subfossil shells are from the species Pomatias elegans, Granaria frumentum, Retinella olivetorum, Xerolenta obvia obvia, Oxychilus cf. draparnaudi, Monacha cartusiana and Monacha cantiana. The present checklist is the first report in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennine and Emilia-Romagna areas for six taxa: Morlina glabra glabra, Oxychilius alliarius, Xerosecta cespitum, Fruticicola fruticum, Xerogyra spadae and Xerolenta obvia obvia.

Keywords

• Pliocene Mountain Spur
• Tuscan-Emilian Apennine
• c