Oxychilus alliarius
Garlic glass snail ( Oxychilus alliarius )
The garlic glass snail ( Oxychilus alliarius ) is a land snail from the family of gloss snails ( Oxychilidae ); this family belongs to the suborder of terrestrial snails ( gastropod ).
Features
The housing is a truncated cone-shaped and measures the adult animal to about 7 mm in diameter. It has 4 to 4.5 turns, which increase evenly. Only the last quarter of handling increases more and is slightly lowered with respect to the axis of coiling of the previous turns. The umbilicus is relatively far (about 1/6 of the total diameter ). The surface is fine apart from growth lines nearly smooth and shiny. The color varies from reddish to yellow- brown, sometimes with a slight green tone. The body of the animal is blue-gray. This acts in the live animal and the weak translucent housing much darker. The animal secretes when you touch a strong garlic odor from ( hence the name ).
Occurrence, lifestyle and dissemination
The species lives under leaves, wood or stones in deciduous forests. Occasionally it also occurs in gardens and greenhouses. It eats mainly other snails and fresh plant parts. The distribution area is north-west Euro- Atlantic ( Azores, British Isles, Iceland, Scandinavian coastal areas, northern Germany, the Baltic Sea area ), but also some scattered deposits in Central Europe and the Mediterranean area. Like many other Central European terrestrial snails has since been deported to other regions of the world the garlic glass snail. In Hawaii, for example, the first observed in the 1980s garlic glass snail has become the most common snail species and endangered native species. The spread of garlic glass snail is also considered an essential factor in the extinction of the White-cheeked dresses bird. This former home on the slopes of Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui, first described in 1973 bird lived mainly of endemic land snails of the genus Achatinella Hawaii, which have become increasingly rare due to progress of the garlic glass snail. The last White-cheeked dresses birds were observed in 2004.
System
The genus Oxychilus is divided by some authors into up to sixteen sub- genres. The garlic glass snail is attributed in this classification of the subgenus Oxychilus ( Ortizius ) Forcart, 1957.