Pincerna Preston, 1907

Páll-Gergely, Barna, 2023, Revision of the Alycaeidae of China, Laos and Vietnam (Gastropoda: Cyclophoroidea) II: The genera Alycaeus and Pincerna, Zootaxa 5249 (2), pp. 253-276 : 259-260

Genus Pincerna Preston, 1907

Alycaeus (Pincerna) Preston, 1907: 206 .

Pincerna —Páll-Gergely 2017: 214; Páll-Gergely 2020: 167 .

Type species. Alycaeus (Pincerna) liratula Preston, 1907 , by original designation.

Remarks. The genus Cycloryx was treated as a junior synonym of Pincerna (Páll-Gergely 2017, Páll-Gergely et al. 2020), because the ovately conoid shells shape, the regular ribbing on the upper whorls, and the extremely short, often clubbed or pear-shaped sutural tube of the two groups are remarkably similar. However, unpublished molecular phylogenetic analysis revealed that while a Peninsular Malaysian Pincerna species clustered together with Stomacosmethis Bollinger, 1918 species from the same geographic area, the Cycloryx species from Myanmar and Nepal were closely related to Dioryx Benson, 1859 species, indicating that the morphological similarity of Cycloryx and Pincerna species are probably the result of convergence. Therefore, Cycloryx was resurrected by Gittenberger et al. (2022), who used it as a valid genus for Bhutanese species. It is not clear whether the Pincerna species inhabiting China, Laos and Vietnam are more closely related to the Himalayan ( Cycloryx ) or the Malaysian ( Pincerna ) group. There is a greater possibility that the Chinese, Lao and northern Vietnamese ‘ Pincerna ’ species are in fact Cycloryx , because of the very close similarity of some Cycloryx species with P. costulosus (see under that species). Nevertheless, until more convincing information becomes available, the species of those countries are classified in Pincerna , following the most recent genus-level revision of the Alycaeidae ( Páll-Gergely et al. 2020) .

Pincerna (meaning bartender in Latin) is masculine, not feminine, despite the ‘a’ ending.