Tornatellina novoseelandica Pfeiffer, 1853

Brook, Fred J. & Ablett, Jonathan D., 2019, Type material of land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) described from New Zealand by taxonomists in Europe and North America between 1830 and 1934, and the history of research on the New Zealand land snail fauna from 1824 to 1917, Zootaxa 4697 (1), pp. 1-117 : 21

Tornatellina novoseelandica Pfeiffer, 1853

Pl. 12, fig. A

Pfeiffer, 1853a. Monographia heliceorum viventium, 3: 524.

Type material: Description based on one or more specimens in the Cuming collection; type material not found in NHMUK collections in 2018, whereabouts unknown .

Type locality: ‘Nova Seelandia’ ( Pfeiffer 1853a: 524).

Previous illustrations of type material: Küster (1852 [in 1841–1855]: pl. 18, figs. 10, 11 [reproduced here in pl. 12, fig. A]).

Remarks: Tornatellina novoseelandica Küster, 1852 and Tornatellina novoseelandica Pfeiffer, 1853 are based on the same type material, which was sent to H. Cuming by the Australian-based naturalist Frederick Strange. Pfeiffer evidently intended to publish the original description of this species in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London issue for 1851 (see Küster 1852 [in 1841-1855]: 149; Pfeiffer 1853a: 524), but publication was delayed until 1854 ( Pfeiffer 1854b: 149), and was pre-empted by Küster (1852 [in 1841-1855]: 149). According to Pfeiffer, this is the species that Gray (1850: 167) listed as Elasmatina reclusiana (not of Petit 1843). Authorship of Tornatellina novoseelandica has generally been attributed to Pfeiffer (e.g., Hector 1873: 21; Hutton 1880: 14; Suter 1913b: 769; Pilsbry & Cooke 1915 [in 1914–1916]: 181; Cooke & Kondo 1961: 169; Climo 1973: 579; Powell 1979: 302; Spencer et al., 2009: 214), but Küster’s name has priority [see Coan et al. 2012 for collation of publication dates of volume 1 (15) of Systematisches Conchylien-Cabinet von Martini und Chemnitz].

Taxonomy: Tornatellina novoseelandica Pfeiffer, 1853 is a junior primary homonym and an objective junior synonym of Tornatellinops novoseelandica (Küster, 1852) N. syn.