Helicigona lapicida

Stone Picker ( Helicigona lapicida )

The Stone Picker ( Helicigona lapicida ) is a type of helicid ( Helicidae ), which is characterized by a flat, lenticular and characteristically gekieltes housing, which would enable it to retire in dry tree in cracks and crevices.

Features

The housing of the stone picker ( Helicigona lapicida ) differs in its shape significantly from the spherical housing other helicid ( Helicidae ). It is lenticular in shape with a low thread. The outermost whorl has a clear signed off edge ( Kiel). The cabinet surface is finely striated and rather coarse gekörnelt. In gray-brown ground color is reddish-brown spots appear blurry. Albino housing are almost transparent. The aperture rim is replaced and expanded to a strong white lip. The umbilicus is wide and open, clearly visible. The housing reaches a width of 12 to 20 millimeters, a height of 7 to 9 mm and has about 5 ½ to whorls.

Habitat

The stone picker inhabits shady, like overgrown vegetation of rocks and walls. Despite its name, the worm is not only rock, but also on trees, found mainly deciduous trees such as beech, hornbeam and maple. In rainy weather they crawl up the trunk to devour the growing on the bark of algae.

The characteristic shape of the casing stone pickers can be explained as an adaptation to the persistence of droughts: the lenticular flat housing allows the stone picker to retire in bark cracks and crevices.

Dissemination

Pogge occur mainly in the hills and mountain forests of western and central Europe. Their range extends from central Portugal into middle Scandinavia. In the UK the way to find to southern Scotland. In Southern Ireland the stone picker was where he performed as a relic of the post-glacial warm period ( Atlantic period ), as demonstrated in 1968, is recognized as extinct probably due to habitat loss. In the Alps is the kind, except in Campo Tures, just north of the main ridge widespread in the east to in the Polish Jura and in the Western Carpathians.