Geography
In News: India’s newest recorded snail named after Western Ghats
- The Western Ghats of Maharashtra have yielded a carnivorous land snail new to the world of science.
- The Haploptychius sahyadriensis is endemic to the Vishalgad Conservation Reserve in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district
- The Haploptychius sahyadriensis, recorded from the northern Western Ghats of Maharashtra, is the third member of the genus Haploptychius.
- The other two – H. andamanicus and H. pfeifferi – were recorded in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the 1860s.
- It is named after the type locality of the species in the northern part of the Western Ghats, which is Sahyadri in Sanskrit
- The ‘Sahyadri snail’ is distinguished from other Indian and Southeast Asia’s Haploptychius in having a sub-oblique helical shell, low spire and presence of a strong parietal lamella.
- The new species also has a unique genital anatomy
Source: The Hindu
