Helicina guppyi 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 tropical land snail

Land snail

A land snail is any of the many species of snail that live on land, as opposed to those that live in salt water and fresh water. Land snails are terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have shells, It is not always an easy matter to say which species are terrestrial, because some are more or less...

 with an operculum

Operculum (gastropod)

The operculum, meaning little lid, is a corneous or calcareous anatomical structure which exists in many groups of sea snails and freshwater snails, and also in a few groups of land snails...

, 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...

 gastropod mollusk in the family Helicinidae

Helicinidae

Helicinidae is a family of small tropical land snails which have an operculum. They are terrestrial operculate gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Helicinoidea....

.

Shell description

The species is smaller and lower-spired

Spire (mollusc)

A spire is a descriptive term for part of the coiled shell of mollusks. The word is a convenient aid in describing shells, but it does not refer to a very precise part of shell anatomy: the spire consists of all of the whorls except for the body whorl...

 than the other Dominican Helicina species, and has always a dull brown colour, a paler 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....

 and a hairy periostracum

Periostracum

The periostracum is a thin organic coating or "skin" which is the outermost layer of the shell of many shelled animals, including mollusks and brachiopods. Among mollusks it is primarily seen in snails and clams, i.e. in bivalves and gastropods, but it is also found in cephalopods such as the...

; ‘covered with a velvety epidermis’, weakly keeled, with a columellar denticle. Size 5-8.5 mm.

Distribution

This species is lives in Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

, Dominica and in Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

.

This is the most common of the helicinids in Dominica, but generally restricted to the leeward side of the island.

Taxonomy

Robert John Lechmere Guppy

Robert John Lechmere Guppy

Robert John Lechmere Guppy was a British-born naturalist after whom the guppy is named...

 (1868) described two taxa from Dominica based on shell variation within this species; both names were preoccupied. William Harper Pease

William Harper Pease

William Harper Pease was a 19th-century American conchologist, shell collector and malacologist. He described many species of Indo-Pacific marine mollusks from the Cumming collection....

 (1871) provided a substitute name in his treatment of Indo-Pacific species. This species was placed in the subgenus Striatemoda by Horace Burrington Baker (1940) based on Guppy’s (1868) comparison with the Puerto Rican Alcadia subfusca (Menke, 1828), and also on 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...

’s (1892) erroneous placement of this species with the Hispaniolan Alcadia rufa (L. Pfeiffer, 1857). There is expected the forthcoming revision of the Lesser Antillean Helicinidae by Ira Richling (from Kiel

Kiel

Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...

, Germany).

Ecology

This species is usually collected on the trunks of trees, where it is well camouflaged on tree bark, or among detritus

Detritus

Detritus is a biological term used to describe dead or waste organic material.Detritus may also refer to:* Detritus , a geological term used to describe the particles of rock produced by weathering...

and leaves on the ground.