Viviparoidea

Bellamya unicolor, from the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.

Belongs within: Gastropoda.
Contains: Viviparinae.

The Viviparoidea are an entirely freshwater group of snails including the living Viviparidae and the tentatively assigned Late Jurassic to Pliocene Pliopholygidae. Members of this group have thick, globose shells, often with a spiral banding pattern. Viviparidae feed via muco-ciliary filtering, as did at least some Pliopholygidae (Gray 1988). Water is drawn in through the left side of the mantle cavity and passed though long filaments on the ctenidium where suspended particles are captured by mucus that is then passed forward towards the mouth. Subfamilies of the Viviparidae are largely separated geographically with the Bellamyinae found in the Old World tropics and subtropics and the Lioplacinae in the Nearctic realm. The early Carboniferous Bernicia praecursor has been suggested as an early representative of the Viviparidae but is considerably earlier than more definite representatives in the middle Jurassic (Tracey et al. 1993).

Characters (from Simone 2011): Shell multispiral, with tall spire, deep suture. Operculum with an upper-inner projection. Gill filaments long for filter-feeding. Endostyle in right side of gill. Salivary gland as two separated masses. Right tentacle as copulatory organ and closed (tubular) vas deferens.

<==Viviparoidea [Vivipariacea]
    |--Pliopholygidae BR05
    |    |--Scalez G88
    |    |--Pliopholyx Yen 1944 BR05
    |    |    `--*P. idahoensis Yen 1944 BR17
    |    |--Reesidella G88
    |    |    `--‘Amnicola’ gilloides [incl. A. jurassica] G88
    |    `--Amuropaludina Moskvicheva 1979 BR17, BR05 [Amuropaludinidae]
    |         `--*A. praerosa (Gerstfeldt 1859) [=Paludina praerosa] BR17
    `--Viviparidae BR05
         |  i. s.: Lioplacodes Meek & Hayden 1864 ZZ88
         |           |--L. convexiculus Yen 1946 ZZ88
         |           `--L. cholnokyi ZZ88
         |         Neothauma Smith 1880 BC01
         |           |--*N. tanganyicense Smith 1880 (see below for synonymy) PB27
         |           `--N. dubium B50
         |         Solemella Bandel 2002 BR05
         |         Notopala S11
         |           |--N. ampullaroides (Reeve 1863) S11
         |           `--N. essingtonensis (Frauenfeld 1862) S11
         |         Larina strangei (Adams 1854) S11
         |         Tulotoma G88
         |         Bernicia Cox 1927 TTE93, KC60
         |           `--*B. praecursor Cox 1927 KC60
         |--Lioplax Troschel 1857 [Lioplaces, Lioplacidae, Lioplacinae] BR05
         |    |--*L. subcarinata (Say 1816) [=Lymnaea subcarinata] BR17
         |    `--L. cyclostomaformis (Lea 1841) [incl. Paludina elliotti Lea 1858] BC01
         |--Bellamya Jousseaume 1886 [Bellamyidae, Bellamyinae] BR05
         |    |--*B. bellamya Jousseaume 1886 BR17 [=Vivipara unicolor var. bellamyi Dautzenberg 1890 PB27]
         |    |--B. bengalensis RW84
         |    |--B. clavilithiformis (Grabau 1923) (see below for synonymy) YZ83
         |    |    |--B. c. clavilithiformis ZZ88
         |    |    `--B. c. conradiformis ZZ88
         |    `--B. unicolor G91
         `--Viviparinae BR05

Bellamya clavilithiformis (Grabau 1923) [=Campeloma clavilithiformis, Viviparus (Bellamya) clavilithiformis] YZ83

*Neothauma tanganyicense Smith 1880 [=Paludina tanganyicensis, Viviparus tanganyicensis; incl. N. bicarinatum Bourguignat 1885, N. tanganyicense var. bicarinatum, N. bridouxianum Grandidier 1885, N. euryomphalum Bourguignat 1888, N. tanganyicense var. euryomphalum, N. giraudi Bourguignat 1885, N. jouberti Bourguignat 1888, N. tanganyicense var. major Germain 1905, N. pelseneeri Bourguignat 1890, N. servainianum Grandidier 1885, N. tanganikanum Grandidier 1885, N. tanganyikanum Germain 1908, N. vysseri Bourguignat 1888] PB27

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[BR05] Bouchet, P., & J.-P. Rocroi. 2005. Classification and nomenclator of gastropod families. Malacologia 47 (1–2): 1–397.

[BR17] Bouchet, P., J.-P. Rocroi, B. Hausdorf, A. Kaim, Y. Kano, A. Nützel, P. Parkhaev, M. Schrödl & E. E. Strong. 2017. Revised classification, nomenclator and typification of gastropod and monoplacophoran families. Malacologia 61 (1–2): 1–526.

[BC01] Boyko, C. B., & J. R. Cordeiro. 2001. Catalog of Recent type specimens in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History. V. Mollusca, part 2 (class Gastropoda [exclusive of Opisthobranchia and Pulmonata], with supplements to Gastropoda [Opisthobranchia], and Bivalvia). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 262: 1–170.

[B50] Brooks, J. L. 1950. Speciation in ancient lakes (concluded). Quarterly Review of Biology 25: 131–176.

[G88] Gray, J. 1988. Evolution of the freshwater ecosystem: the fossil record. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 62: 1–214.

[G91] Groves, C. P. 1991. A Theory of Human and Primate Evolution, revised ed. Clarendon Press: Oxford.

[KC60] Knight, J. B., L. R. Cox, A. M. Keen, R. L. Batten, E. L. Yochelson & R. Robertson. 1960. Gastropoda: systematic descriptions. In: Moore, R. C. (ed.) Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology pt I. Mollusca 1: Mollusca—General Features, Scaphopoda, Amphineura, Monoplacophora, Gastropoda—General Features, Archaeogastropoda and some (mainly Paleozoic) Caenogastropoda and Opisthobranchia pp. I169–I331. Geological Society of America, and University of Kansas Press.

[PB27] Pilsbry, H. A., & J. Bequaert. 1927. The aquatic mollusks of the Belgian Congo, with a geographical and ecological account of Congo malacology. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 53 (2): 69–602, pls 10–77.

[RW84] Rollinson, D., & C. A. Wright. 1984. Population studies on Bulinus cernicus from Mauritius. Malacologia 25 (2): 447–463.

[S11] Simone, L. R. L. 2011. Phylogeny of the Caenogastropoda (Mollusca), based on comparative morphology. Arquivos de Zoologia 42 (4): 161–323.

[TTE93] Tracey, S., J. A. Todd & D. H. Erwin. 1993. Mollusca: Gastropoda. In: Benton, M. J. (ed.) The Fossil Record 2 pp. 131–167. Chapman & Hall: London.

[YZ83] Yu W. & Zhu X.-G. 1983. Some Late Mesozoic gastropods from eastern Heilongjiang. In: Fossils from the Middle-Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous in Eastern Heilongjiang Province, China pp. 87–99. Heilongjiang Science and Technology Publishing House.

[ZZ88] Zhu G.-X. & Zhou Y.-Z. 1988. Fresh-water molluscan fauna across Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary in southeast Jilin. Acta Palaeontologica Sinica 27 (6): 713–721.

Last updated: 24 February 2022.