Abstract
Using published records and original data from recent field work and revision of Iranian material of certain species deposited in the collections of the Natural History Museum Basel, the Zoological Museum Berlin, and Natural History Museum Vienna, a checklist of the freshwater gastropod fauna of Iran was compiled. This checklist contains 73 species from 34 genera and 14 families of freshwater snails; 27 of these species (37%) are endemic to Iran. Two new genera, Kaskakia and Sarkhia, and eight species, i.e., Bithynia forcarti, Bithynia starmuehlneri, Bithynia mazandaranensis, Pseudamnicola georgievi, Kaskakia khorrasanensis, Sarkhia sarabensis, Valvata nowsharensis and Acroloxus pseudolacustris are described as new to science; Ecrobia grimmi (Clessin & Dybowski, 1888), Heleobia dalmatica (Radoman, 1974) and Hippeutis complanatus (Linnaeus, 1758) are reported for the first time from Iran. Additional field work is highly desirable for a more appropriate evaluation of the extant freshwater snail biodiversity in Iran.
Highlights
Considering the geographical position of Iran, a rich fauna of freshwater snails could be expected
The type material will be deposited in the Zoological Museum Ham-The freshwater snails (Gastropoda) of Iran, with descriptions of two new genera
The checklist of Iranian freshwater snails presented here shows a total of 73 species in 34 genera and 14 families
Summary
Considering the geographical position of Iran, a rich fauna of freshwater snails could be expected. In 1862, a group of Italian scientists undertook the first systematic expedition to Persia, which revealed a large number of molluscan samples. The results of this expedition have been published by Issel (1863). In 1936 he noted: “Little has been written on the Mollusca of the Iranian Plateau. This was perhaps due to the inaccessibility of the interior in the past when the only method of travelling was by caravan”. Starmühlner (1961, 1965) studied molluscs from Northern and Eastern Iran collected by the Austrian A. Mansoorian (1986, 1994, 1998, 2000) published on the molluscan fauna of Iran
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