Morphological and Molecular Identification of Some Terrestrial Snails: First Report

Abstract

Land snail identification researches in Iraq is limited. In Erbil-Iraq, a study was carried out to explore the identification of various land snails. In earlier studies, most species determination was based on shell morphology, anatomy of genitalia, and mantle color, these criteria are continuously applied to describe new species/new records. Species of similar morphology have ambiguous identities, especially juvenile specimens, due to the great level of morphological variation observed in some snail species. Five species of land snails belong to four families were found in different locations of Erbil City, Iraq, during November 2020 to April 2021, when average temperature was arranged (4-25 C°). Morphology and Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene were used to identify specimens, Rumina decollate (Linnaeus, 1758), found for the first time in Iraq. In addition to four species: Eobania vermiculata (Müller, 1774), Cornu aspersum (Müller, 1774), Cochlicella barbara (Linnaeus, 1758) and Polygyra cereolus (Megerle von Mühlfeldt, 1818) were previously registered in Iraq and have never been recorded in Erbil City, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. This study highlights the impotence of genetic analyses along with morphological analyses in identification of species. This finding suggests, for precise evaluation of species diversity, molecular tools should be included in future biodiversity researches.

Keywords

• COI gene, Molecular phylogeny, Morphology, Land snail, Erbil, Iraq.