Snail systematics

We are currently updating the knowledge about nomenclature, relationships, and distribution of snails of Arianta arbustorum and related species.

But see Rodrigo Salvador’s personal page for much more snail systematics and taxonomy.

Main results

Forgotten museum specimens: Our search for all things Arianta has led us to an unexpected place. We (re)discovered some infraspecific taxa of Arianta arbustorum from Switzerland that were described in the 19th century by a Belgian landscape painter and that had since been forgotten. We were able to find his original specimens in the collection of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and study them. Despite the weird story, these taxa are just synonyms of “regular” A. arbustorum (Salvador et al. 2025).

Salvador et al. 2025: fig. 4. A. Syntype of Helix arbustorum icterica Roffiaen, 1868. B. Possible syntype of Helix arbustorum trochoidalis Roffiaen, 1868. Labels not to scale with shells.

Phylogeographic study: We studied all subspecies and populations of Arianta arbustorum throughout Europe (and including an introduced population in Canada). We split the species in two species: the “regular” Arianta arbustorum and Arianta canigonensis, which has isolated populations in the Pyrenees and the Western Alps of France and Italy. We demonstrated that Baltic/Nordic population is a recent expansion front of the species, which still has little genetic divergence. The subspecies pseudorudis from Iceland, once thought to be distinct from the mainland species, was shown to be genetically identical (Salvador et al. 2026).