Rathouisiidae

Rathouisiidae is a family of carnivorous air-breathing land slugs, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Veronicelloidea, the leatherleaf slugs and their allies.

Rathouisiidae
Atopos slug attacking Plectostoma concinnum by shell-drilling.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Mollusca
Class:
Gastropoda
(unranked):
clade Heterobranchia

clade Euthyneura
clade Panpulmonata
clade Eupulmonata

clade Systellommatophora
Superfamily:
Veronicelloidea
Family:
Rathouisiidae

Heude, 1885[1]
Synonyms

Rathouisiadae (original spelling)

This family has no subfamilies according to the Taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005.

The scientific name Rathouisiidae is based on the name of the type genus, Rathouisia which in turn was named in honor of the French Jesuit Père Charles Rathouis (1834–1890), who made scientific drawings for Pierre Marie Heude.[2]

Genera

Genera within the family Rathouisiidae include:

Distribution

The predatory carnivorous slugs in the genus Atopos are found in peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, northeast Australia and, recently, Singapore.

Feeding habits

Rathouisiidae are carnivorous and feed on other gastropods, but also on fungi and plants.[7]

Bornean Atopos specialising in Opisthostoma are known to tailor their approach to the size of the prey. They hold small snails with the shells aperture-upward with the front of its foot and eat their way down. Larger ones scrape away the shell to allow access through the spire. This behaviour is thought to drive the evolution of shell ornamentation in Opisthostoma.[8]

References
  1. Heude P. M. (1885). Mémoires concernant l'histoire naturelle de l'empire chinois par des pères de la Compagnie de Jésus. Notes sur les Mollusques terrestres de la vallée du Fleuve Bleu. Mision Catholique, Chang-Hai. 3: 89–132, plates 22-32. page 99.
  2. Heude P. M. (1883). "Note sur un Limacien nouveau de Chine". Journal de Conchyliologie 31: 394–395.
  3. (in German) Simroth H. (1891). "Über das Vaginuludengenus Atopos n. g.". Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie 52: 593–616. plate 37. page 593.
  4. Manganelli, Giuseppe; Lesicki, Andrzej; Benocci, Andrea; Barbato, Debora; Miserocchi, Danio; Pieńkowska, Joanna R; Giusti, Folco (2022-07-25). "A small slug from a tropical greenhouse reveals a new rathouisiid lineage with triaulic tritrematic genitalia (Gastropoda: Systellommatophora)". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 197: 76–103. doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac054. ISSN 0024-4082.
  5. Minato, H. (1989). "A Remarkable Slug, Granulilimax fuscicornis n. gen. et sp. from Japan". Venus. 48 (4): 255–258. doi:10.18941/venusjjm.48.4_255.
  6. Kimura, Kazuki; Sano, Isao; Kameda, Yuichi; Saito, Takumi; Chiba, Satoshi (January 2020). "Phylogenetic Position of the Japanese Land Slug Genus Granulilimax Minato, 1989 Based on Preliminary Analyses of Mitochondrial and Nuclear Genes". American Malacological Bulletin. 37 (2): 53–61. doi:10.4003/006.037.0202. S2CID 210863290.
  7. Barker G. M. (2001) Gastropods on Land: Phylogeny, Diversity and Adaptive Morphology. 1–146. In: Barker G. M. (ed.) (2001) The biology of terrestrial molluscs. CABI Publishing, Oxon, UK, cited pages: 69. ISBN 0-85199-318-4.
  8. Tan S. K. & Chan S-Y. (2009). "New records of predatory slugs from Singapore with notes on their feeding behaviour". Nature in Singapore 2: 1–7. PDF.
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