Helix hochstetteri Pfeiffer, 1861

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 : 79-80

Helix hochstetteri Pfeiffer, 1861

Pl. 15, fig. C

Pfeiffer, 1861. Malakozoologische Blätter, 8: 146.

Type material: Holotype, by monotypy. Listed by Suter (1913b: 782) as being in the ‘ K.K. Hofmuseum, Vienna’, but not found during a search of the collections in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien in 2014 (Anita Eschner pers. comm.). As noted in the Introduction (above), the type specimen may have gone to the Pommersches Museum, Stettin [= Szczecin], after Pfeiffer’s death in 1877, in which case it has probably been lost or destroyed.

Type locality: ‘Zwischen 3–4000’ Meereshöhe auf den Kalkegebirgen der neuseeländischen Alpen an der Cook’sstrasse auf der sudlichen Insel. Das vorliegende, leider am Mundsaume etwas beschädigte Exemplar stammt vom Pikekerunga-Pass’ ( Pfeiffer 1861: 147) .

Previous illustrations of type material: Hochstetter (1867: 169 [reproduced here in pl. 15, fig. C]).

Remarks: The original description of Helix hochstetteri was based on a specimen obtained by Ferdinand von Hochstetter in 1859, and which had probably been collected in the vicinity of Takaka Hill saddle, at the southern end of the Pikikiruna Range ( Pfeiffer 1861; Johnston & Nolden 2014: 91, 92). A statement by Travers (1895: 224) that Hochstetter’s specimen was found “near some ponds on the Dun Mountain Pass, between Nelson and Pelorus Valley”, does not match the locality details given by Pfeiffer (1861), and is evidently incorrect. Powell (1930: 37, pl. 1, fig. 1) selected and illustrated a specimen from “Mt. Campbell on the Motueka side of the Pikikiruna Range [= Arthur Range]” (in AIM MA91374) as a plesiotype. Helix hochstetteri Pfeiffer, 1861 is the type species of Powelliphanta O’Connor, 1945 , by original designation.

Current Taxonomy: Listed as Powelliphanta hochstetteri ( Pfeiffer, 1861) by Climo (1977: 60, 1978b: 293 —in part), Parkinson (1979: 12), Meads et al. (1984: 291), Walker (2003: 44) and Spencer et al. (2009: 218).

Distribution: New Zealand; northern South Island—Pikikiruna and northern Arthur ranges, Cobb Ridge and Lockett Range ( Powell 1979; Meads et al. 1984; Walker 2003).