The strong axial ribs which feature prominently on the apical half of the last whorls are characteristic to this species. The whorls are sometimes weakly to moderately shouldered, sometimes evenly convex.
"Thiara" australis I. Lea & H.. C. Lea, 1850
Class Gastropoda
Infraclass Caenogastropoda
Megaorder Cerithiimorpha
Order Cerithiida
Superfamily Cerithioidea
Family Thiaridae
Original name: Thiara australis Lea & Lea, 1850. In Lea, I. & Lea, H. C. (1851). Description of a new genus of the family Melaniana, and of many new species of the genus Melania, chiefly collected by Hugh Cuming, Esq., during his zoological voyage in the East, and now first described. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1850: 179-197.
Type locality: Victoria River, Northern Territory.
Synonyms: Melania cerea Brot, 1860; Melania decussata Brot, 1862.
Glaubrecht et al. (2009) indicated that a new generic name might be necessary for this taxon based on unpublished molecular data - those authors referred to this species in the same way we do here.
On and in sediment, rocks and water weeds in freshwater rivers, streams, lakes and dams. Embryos brooded in brood pouch in head and released as crawling juveniles (Maaß & Glaubrecht, 2012).
Tropical northern Australia.
Beesley, P. L., Ross, G. J. B. & Wells, A., Eds. (1998). Mollusca: The Southern Synthesis. Parts A & B. Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing.
Glaubrecht, M., Brinkmann, N. & Pöppe, J. (2009). Diversity and disparity ‘down under’: systematics, biogeography and reproductive modes of the ‘marsupial’ freshwater Thiaridae (Caenogastropoda, Cerithioidea) in Australia. Zoosystematics and Evolution 85: 199-275.
Iredale, T. (1943). A basic list of the fresh water Mollusca of Australia. Australian Zoologist 10: 188-230.
Maaß, N. & Glaubrecht, M. (2012). Comparing the reproductive biology of three “marsupial”, eu-viviparous gastropods (Cerithioidea, Thiaridae) from drainages of Australia’s monsoonal north. Zoosystematics and Evolution 88: 293–315.
Smith, B. J. (1992). Non-marine Mollusca. Pp. i-xii, 1-408 in W. W. K. Houston. Zoological Catalogue of Australia, 8. Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service.
Willan, E. C. & Kessner, V. (2021). A conspectus of the freshwater molluscs of the Daly River catchment, Northern Territory. Northern Territory Naturalist 30: 108-137.
