Chondrina clienta is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of small air-breathing land snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

, a terrestrial

Terrestrial animal

Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land , as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water , or amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats...

 pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Chondrinidae

Chondrinidae

Chondrinidae is a family of mostly minute air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the order Pulmonata.-Anatomy:In this family, the number of haploid chromosomes lies between 26 and 30 ....

.

This species is also known under the synonyms Chondrina arcadica (Reinhardt, 1881) and Chondrina arcadica clienta (Westerlund 1883).

Shell description

The shell

Gastropod shell

The gastropod shell is a shell which is part of the body of a gastropod or snail, one kind of mollusc. The gastropod shell is an external skeleton or exoskeleton, which serves not only for muscle attachment, but also for protection from predators and from mechanical damage...

 of this species is slender, greyish-brown to reddish-brown. It is conical-ovoid in shape with 7 - 7½ whorls

Whorl (mollusc)

A whorl is a single, complete 360° revolution or turn in the spiral growth of a mollusc shell. A spiral configuration of the shell is found in of numerous gastropods, but it is also found in shelled cephalopods including Nautilus, Spirula and the large extinct subclass of cephalopods known as the...

. The shell is slightly translucent and shows regular axial lines. There is some microgeographical variation in its shell size. The apertural margin is slightly widened, and has a thin, whitish lip. There are strong, angular teeth along the aperture

Aperture (mollusc)

The aperture is an opening in certain kinds of mollusc shells: it is the main opening of the shell, where part of the body of the animal emerges for locomotion, feeding, etc....

.

Distribution

The distribution of this species is Alpine and southeastern-European. but this snail can occur as far north as on the Baltic island of Oland

Öland

' is the second largest Swedish island and the smallest of the traditional provinces of Sweden. Öland has an area of 1,342 km² and is located in the Baltic Sea just off the coast of Småland. The island has 25,000 inhabitants, but during Swedish Midsummer it is visited by up to 500,000 people...

, southern Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. The snails can be found on exposed limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 rocks to a height of about 2,500 m.

This species occurs in:

• Czech Republic - vulnerable (VU)
• Slovakia
• and others