Abstract
A new species of cave snail (Littorinimorpha: Cochliopidae) in the genus Antrorbis is described from the dark zone of two caves in the Appalachian Valley and Ridge province in eastern Tennessee, United States. The Tennessee Cavesnail, Antrorbis tennesseensis Perez, Shoobs, Gladstone, & Niemiller, sp. nov. is distinguished from its only known congener, Antrorbis breweri, by the absence of raised tubercles on its finely spirally striate protoconch, and its unique radular formula. Moreover, A. tennesseensis is genetically distinct from A. breweri based on substantial divergence at the mitochondrial CO1 locus. This is the first cavesnail to be described from the Appalachian Valley and Ridge (AVR) physiographic province in the state of Tennessee, which previously represented a substantial gap in the distribution of stygobitic (i.e., aquatic, subterranean-obligate) gastropods.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 103-120 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | ZooKeys |
| Volume | 2019 |
| Issue number | 898 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2019 |
Funding
This study was supported by a grant from the Cave Conservancy Foundation (to ASE and MLN) and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (grant no. F17AC00939 to MLN). We thank S Engel, CDR Stephen, A Paterson, J Carter, ML McKinney, and V Frazier for assisting with cave surveys. We thank D Delicado for providing sequence data for Antrorbis breweri, L Bailey for assisting with molecular aspects of this study, FE Anderson for helpful advice related to the phylogenetic analyses, and T Wilke for a thorough review of the manuscript. Collection of specimens was permitted by scientific collection permits no. 1605 and 1385 issued to MLN, ASE, ETC, and NSG.
Keywords
- Antrorbis
- Cavesnail
- Cochliopidae
- Stygofauna
- Systematics