Helicina guppyi is a species of tropical land snail with an operculum, a terrestrial gastropod mollusk in the family Helicinidae.
The species is smaller and lower-spired than the other Dominican Helicina species, and always has a dull brown colour, a paler aperture and a hairy periostracum; ‘covered with a velvety epidermis’, weakly keeled, with a columellar denticle.[2] Its size is 5-8.5 mm.[2]
This species lives in Guadeloupe, Dominica and in Martinique.[2]
This is the most common of the helicinids in Dominica, but generally restricted to the leeward side of the island.[2]
Robert John Lechmere Guppy (1868)[3] described two taxa from Dominica based on shell variation within this species; both names were preoccupied.[2] William Harper Pease (1871)[1] provided a substitute name in his treatment of Indo-Pacific species.[2] This species was placed in the subgenus Striatemoda by Horace Burrington Baker (1940)[4] based on Guppy’s (1868) comparison with the Puerto Rican Alcadia subfusca (Menke, 1828), and also on Pilsbry’s (1892)[5] erroneous placement of this species with the Hispaniolan Alcadia rufa (L. Pfeiffer, 1857).[2] There is expected the forthcoming revision of the Lesser Antillean Helicinidae by Ira Richling (from Kiel, Germany).[2]
This species is usually collected on the trunks of trees, where it is well camouflaged on tree bark, or among detritus and leaves on the ground.[2]
This article incorporates CC-BY-3.0 text from the reference.[2]
Helicina guppyi is a species of tropical land snail with an operculum, a terrestrial gastropod mollusk in the family Helicinidae.
