Beddomeia camensis Ponder & Clark, 1993

Diagnostic features

Species of the B. hullii group are found in the northern half of Tasmania. Their shells are small (1.7-3.7 mm in length; most less than 3.5 mm), simple, ovate-conic to broadly conic, with a thin inner lip and no columellar bulge. The periphery of the last whorl of the shell is rounded, subangled or angled and the penis simple.

This species shares, with B. fallax, the same position of the joining of the bursal and oviduct at the posterior pallial wall. The two taxa can be readily distinguished by the position of the posterior loop of the coiled oviduct, which extends to the posterior edge of the bursa copulatrix in B. camensis and well beyond it in B. fallax, and by the relative length of the albumen gland in the mantle cavity, about 1/3 in B. fallax and 2/3 in B. camensis.

Classification

Beddomeia camensis Ponder & Clark, 1993

Class Gastropoda

Infraclass Caenogastropoda

Order Littorinida

Suborder Rissoidina

Superfamily Truncatelloidea

Family Beddomeiidae

Genus Beddomeia Petterd, 1889

Original name: Beddomeia camensis Ponder & Clark, 1993. In Ponder, W.F., Clark, G.A., Miller, A.C. & Toluzzi, A. (1993). On a major radiation of freshwater snails in Tasmania and eastern Victoria: a preliminary overview of the Beddomeia group (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Hydrobiidae). Invertebrate Taxonomy 7: 501-750. 

Type locality: Tributary of Cam River, on Oonah Road, Tasmania.

Biology and ecology

This species lives in a large stream under large, stable rocks which are not in the swiftest flowing parts. Egg capsules presumably like those of other species of Beddomeia - dome-shaped, with broad attachment base, covered with minute, mainly white sand grains and other fragments and containing a single egg. Development direct.

Distribution

Only known from type locality and a few nearby locations in NW Tasmania.

Notes

All species of Beddomeia are geographically isolated and have restricted ranges.

Two species of Austropyrgus are also found at the locality where this species occurs.

This species is on the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 as Endangered.

Further reading

Ponder, W. F., Clark, G. A., Miller, A. C. & Toluzzi, A. (1993). On a major radiation of freshwater snails in Tasmania and eastern Victoria: a preliminary overview of the Beddomeia group (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Hydrobiidae). Invertebrate Taxonomy 7: 501-750.