Arion ater subsp. ater, (Linnaeus, 1758)

Reise, Heike, Schwarzer, Anne-Katrin, Hutchinson, John M. C. & Schlitt, Bettina, 2020, Genital morphology differentiates three subspecies of the terrestrial slug Arion ater (Linnæus, 1758) s. l. and reveals a continuum of intermediates with the invasive A. vulgaris Moquin-Tandon, 1855, Folia Malacologica 28 (1), pp. 1-34 : 29

LINNAEUS (1758: 652) described both A. ater and A. rufus. If we consider these taxa as conspecific, which name has priority depends on the first reviser. Already MÜLLER (1774: 2) treated ater as having priority, but he did not mention the name rufus (he used the earlier name subrufus for what LINNAEUS (1758) called rufus), so cannot count as a reviser. At latest, FLEMING (1822: 572) explicitly treated A. rufus as a variety of A. ater, and this is the priority consistently followed by others who consider the taxa conspecific.

The nominotypical A. ater ater ( Linnaeus, 1758)

is our AR morphotype,