Raheem-2014-Western Ghats Land Snails-1-294

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TROPICAL NATURAL HISTORY, SUPPLEMENT 4, NOVEMBER 2014
follows Bouchet and Rocroi’s (2005) classification.
Our revision, however, differs in
five important ways:
1. While Bouchet and Rocroi (2005) treated
the groupings above superfamily level as
being unranked, we treat their entire arrangement
as hierarchical (see numbered levels in
Table 3).
2. Following the molecular phylogenetic
studies of Wade et al. (2001, 2006), we
consider the major division within the
Stylommatophora to be between an achatinoid
clade (including the Achatinoidea and
Streptaxoidea) and a non-achatinoid group.
3. Unlike Bouchet and Rocroi, we have not
used the superfamily Limacoidea, nor the
term ‘limacoid clade’ above the superfamily
level.
4. Although we have omitted the use of the
subfamily level in the list, we have used
Bouchet and Rocroi’s family and subfamily
arrangement as a guide to assignment of
genera to families; some points of divergence
between our list and the scheme of
Bouchet and Rocroi are explained in the
Taxonomic Notes at the end of the list.
5. We have included the recently-described
family Diapheridae in the superfamily
Streptaxoidea (Sutcharit et al., 2010).
Bouchet and Rocroi’s classification is
only comprehensive as far as the family and
subfamily levels, so the placement of many
of the Western Ghats genera is based on
other sources, primarily Vaught (1989)
(Table 2). Among the cases where we have
not followed Vaught (1989), are the genera
Philalanka, Ruthvenia and Thysanota. Gude
(1914a, p. 10) noted that, prior to Godwin-
Austen (1907), Thysanota had been placed
in widely different groups. In erecting the
Thysanotinae Godwin-Austen (1907, p.
188) included Thysanota, Philalanka and
Sykesia (= Ruthvenia, Sykesia being preoccupied)
and placed them in the Endodontidae.
In our popular guide to the land snails
of the Western Ghats (Raheem et al., 2009)
we followed Vaught (1989, pp. 93-94) in
retaining Philalanka in the Endodontidae,
and placing Ruthvenia and Thysanota in the
Charopidae, widely recognised as a southern
group of probable Gondwanan origin (Smith
and Stanisic, 1998). However, Philalanka is
recorded from Southeast Asia (Gude, 1914a;
Benthem Jutting, 1959; Maassen, 2001), and
it is possible that the Thysanotinae do not
belong in the Charopidae or even fall within
the Punctoidea. Here, we provisionally
follow Godwin-Austen (1907) in including
all three genera in the Thysanotinae and
Bouchet and Rocroi (2005) in placing the
Thysanotinae in the Charopidae.
Unless otherwise indicated, generic
names and the assignment of species to
genera follow the FBI (Blanford and
Godwin-Austen, 1908; Gude, 1914a, 1921).
We have not used subgenera, but some
names used in the FBI at subgeneric level
(e.g. Mirus, see Gude, 1914a, p. 230) are
used here as genera, following published
sources; all such cases are indicated in the
Taxonomic Notes.
Structure of the Revision
Most of the taxa in this list are illustrated by
photographic images of type material, each
image usually being a composite of 4 views
of a single specimen (i.e. apertural, lateral,
dorsal and ventral views). Unless otherwise
stated, all images were taken by one of us
(Harold Taylor, NHM). The NHM holds
copyright of all images taken at the NHM.
For taxa for which types could not be traced,