Lucilla singleyana 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 minute 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 or micromollusk

Micromollusk

A micromollusk is a descriptive term for a shelled mollusk which is extremely small, even at full adult size. The word is usually, but not exclusively, applied to marine mollusks, although in addition, numerous species of land snails and freshwater mollusks also reach adult size at very small...

 in the family Punctidae

Punctidae

Punctidae, common name the "dot snails", is a family of minute air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks or micromollusks in the informal group Sigmurethra ....

, the dot snails.

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 about 2 mm in width.

Original description

Lucilla singleyana was originally discovered and described (under the name Zonites singleyanus) by Henry Augustus Pilsbry

Henry Augustus Pilsbry

Henry Augustus Pilsbry was an American biologist, malacologist and carcinologist, among other areas of study. He was a dominant presence in many fields of invertebrate taxonomy for the better part of a century...

 in 1889.

Pilsbry's original text (the type description

Species description

A species description or type description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species which have been described previously, or are...

) reads as follows:

Distribution

This species is Holarctic

Holarctic

The Holarctic ecozone refers to the habitats found throughout the northern continents of the world as a whole. This region is divided into the Palearctic, consisting of Northern Africa and all of Eurasia, with the exception of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and the Nearctic,...

 in distribution.

The indigenous distribution for this species includes North America.

Then non-indigenous distribution areas include:

• Great Britain
• Poland
• Slovakia

This species was previously announced from the Czech Republic since 1988, but later in 2009 was all findings recognized as Lucilla scintilla

Lucilla scintilla

Lucilla scintilla is a species of minute air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk or micromollusk in the family Punctidae, the dot snails.Lucilla scintilla is the type species of the genus Lucilla.-Distribution:...

.

Ecology

This species lives in soil, see soil-inhabitant

Soil zoology

Soil zoology is the study of animals living fully or partially in the soil . The term was apparently first used for a conference of soil zoologists presenting their research at the University of Nottingham, UK, in 1955.-Bibliography:...

. Technically this is known as being a terricol species.