Tag Archives: Hirasea insignis

Hirasea insignis Pilsbry & Hirase

Remarkable Hirasea Snail (Hirasea insignis)

This species was described in 1904; it is, or maybe was, restricted to the island of Mukojima in the Ogasawara Islands, Japan.

This is a very small species; the shells reach sizes of about 0,2 cm in height and about 0,3 cm in diameter. “Shell imperforate, depressed, with low-conic spire and convex base, impressed in the center. Brown. Very finely and regularly striate radially above, smooth below. Whorls 5, convex, very slowly widening. Aperture crescentic, narrow, the lip strengthened by a strong white rib within, abruptly stopping short of the upper insertion. A long, erect callous lamina stands at the edge of the parietal callous.” [1]

The species might now be extinct. [2]

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References:

[1] Henry A. Pilsbry; Y. Hirase: Descriptions of new land snails of the Japanese Empire. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 56: 616-638. 1904
[2] Robert H. Cowie; Claire Régnier; Benoît Fontaine; Philippe Bouchet. Measuring the Sixth Extinction: what do mollusks tell us? The Nautilus 131(1): 3-41. 2017

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Depiction from: ‘The Conchological Magazine 1907’

(public domain)

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edited: 17.05.2022