No 17 March 2008
TRITON
A NEW RECORD OF HELIX ASPERSA FROM VIRGINIA, USA (PULMONATA: HELICIDAE) Aydın Örstan*) Abstract: The European land snail Helix aspersa was collected in the city of Chincoteague, Virginia, U.S.A. in October 2007. This is a new record of this alien species from Virginia since at least 1973. Key words: Mollusca, gastropoda, Helicidae, Helix aspersa, North-America, Virginia, alien species
There are three published records of the European land snail Helix aspersa Müller (= Cornu aspersum) from the state of Virginia: the city of Norfolk (Hubricht, 1971), Chesapeake County (Beetle, 1973) and Virginia City (Dundee, 1974). None of the authors gave additional details for these records. I was able to locate two of the cited records in the on-line collections database of the Field Museum, Chicago (http://emuweb.fieldmuseum.org/iz/mollusks.php). The record cited by Dundee (1974) dates back to 1924 and was done by an anonymous collector “near Virginia City” (FM 65465). The collection cited by Hubricht (1971) was done by Hubricht himself in 1943 in Norfolk at the “SW corner of Bute & Dunmore Streets” (FM 267828 ). Chincoteague is in the Delmarva Peninsula, shared by, as its name implies, the states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The land snail fauna of the Delmarva Peninsula was recently surveyed by Tim Pearce, but no H. aspersa found (T. Pearce, personal communication). On 14 October 2007, I collected two shells of H. aspersa, one adult and one juvenile, in the city of Chincoteague, Accomack County, Virginia (Fig. 1). Both shells were attached to the back walls of a small commercial building along the traffic circle on Maddox Boulevard (37° 55’ 36.1”N, 75° 21’ 12.6”W). The adult shell (diameter: 31.9 mm) was empty; the juvenile shell contained the dried remains of the snail. Both snails had apparently died recently after they had become dormant on the building wall. The specimens have been deposited in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A. (CM 83420). At the same location, there were also many live Cernuella cisalpina (Rossmaessler) aestivating on the walls, some fully in the sun. The same species was also present on the grounds of a nearby hotel. I had previously collected C. cisalpina at the same locations in June 2001. That species appears to have established itself in Chincoteague. But the lack of live H. aspersa and empty shells other than the two found suggest that the presence of H. aspersa in Chincoteague may have been a temporary event.
1. Helix aspersa shells from Chincoteague, Virginia, U.S.A. References Beetle, D.E. 1973. A checklist of the land and freshwater mollusks of Virginia. Sterkiana, No. 49:21. Dundee, D.S. 1974. Catalog of introduced molluscs of eastern North America. Sterkiana, No. 55:1-37. Hubricht, L. 1971. The land snails of Virginia. Sterkiana, No. 42:41-45. *) Aydın Örstan, Section of Mollusks, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213 U.S.A. E-mail:
[email protected]
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