Endemic to Borneo or the Korean Cheju Island? Mystery of mislabelled land snail solved after 170 years (Gastropoda: Cyclophoroidea: Alycaeidae)

ABSTRACT

The alycaeid Cyclostoma spiracellum Adams & Reeve, 1850 (currently Dicharax spiracellum) was described from Borneo, based on shells from the expedition of HMS Samarang (1843–1846). A comparison with material of nearly all alycaeid species revealed that D. spiracellum is conchologically identical to Alycaeus kurodai Pilsbry & Hirase, 1908, which is described from the Korean Cheju Island. The land operculate snail fauna of Korea and Borneo do not overlap, and D. spiracellum has not been found in Borneo in spite of intensive recent collecting efforts. Therefore, it must be concluded that D. spiracellum does not occur in Borneo and that it was probably obtained when the Samarang visited Cheju Island, and the specimens were most likely mislabelled. As a result, A. kurodai is considered herein as a junior synonym of C. spiracellum, and the type locality of C. spiracellum (Borneo) is corrected to ‘probably Cheju Island, South Korea’. Chamalycaeus kurodai duplicatus Kuroda & Miyanaga, 1943 is treated as Dicharax spiracellum duplicatus (Kuroda & Miyanaga, 1943).

KEYWORDS:

• Incorrect type locality
• endemic species
• synonym
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Jaap Vermeulen and Thor-Seng Liew for their information on D. spiracellum, and their comments on the manuscript, to Kazunori Hasegawa (NSMT), Ronald Janssen (SMT) and Jonathan Ablett (NHM) for granting access to their museum collections, to David (Dai) Herbert for valuable information on the Samarang expedition, to Hukaya Sitosi for translating Japanese label data, and to Kurt Auffenberg to correct the English. I am also grateful to Frank Köhler and Don Colgan for comments on the manuscript. This study was supported by the MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Premium Post Doctorate Research Program. I am indebted to The Biodiversity Heritage Library for the multitude of rare literature made available to us (www.biodiversitylibrary.org).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Premium Post Doctorate Research Program.