Helix iota 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 : 47-48

Helix iota Pfeiffer, 1853

Pl. 6, fig. B

Pfeiffer, 1853. Monographia heliceorum viventium, 3: 69. Type material: Syntype (1), NHMUK 20140673 (dry shell material); ex Museum Cuming (Acc. no. 1829); as noted by Cumber (1961: 179), this specimen is badly damaged.

Label details: ‘ H. iota Pfr, N. Zealand’—in Pfeiffer’s handwriting.

Type locality: ‘Nova Seelandia’ (Pfeiffer 1853: 69; 1854a: 57).

Previous illustrations of type material: Reeve (1852 [in 1851–1854]: pl. 132, fig. 809—as Helix pilula ); Tryon (1886 [from Reeve, 1852]: pl. 62, fig. 43—as Charopa pilula ); Suter (1897c: 284 —as Flammulina pilula ); Goulstone (2001: fig. 8A—as Phenacohelix pilula ).

Remarks: Helix pilula Reeve, 1852 and H. iota Pfeiffer, 1853 are based on the same type material; whether this originally comprised one or more specimens is not known. Pfeiffer evidently intended to publish the first description of this species in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London issue for 1851 (see Reeve 1852 [in 1851–1854]: species 809; Pfeiffer 1853a: 69), but publication was delayed until 1854 ( Pfeiffer 1854a: 57), and was pre-empted by Reeve (1852 [in 1851–1854]).

Current Taxonomy: Treated as a junior synonym of Helix pilula Reeve, 1852 by Martens (1873: 10), Hutton (1884b: 194), Suter (1913b: 666) and Cumber (1961: 177).