Haploptychius sahyadriensis

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