A misinterpreted disjunction: the phylogenetic relationships of the North African land snail Gyrostomella (Gastropoda: Stylommatophora: Helicidae) Author Neiber, Marco T. Author Korábek, Ondřej Author Glaubrecht, Matthias Author Hausdorf, Bernhard text Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 2022 2021-11-29 194 4 1236 1251 https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab059 journal article 55998 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab059 34d33ce1-7740-4dda-a596-56ee43072231 0024-4082 6459053 3ACD5252-F163-406B-ABCC-6B0F6457AA81 BIOGEOGRAPHY OF GYROSTOMELLA The classification of Gyrostomella as a subgenus of Levantina from the Middle East by Hesse (1909a , b, 1911, 1918) suggested that Gyrostomella originated by a westward long-distance dispersal event of Levantina over almost 2000 km along the North African coast or that Gyrostomella is relictual of a formerly much wider range of Levantina ( Fig. 2 ). More specifically, Neubert (1998) proposed that Gyrostomella and the Arabian Laevihelix (now considered a synonym of Levantina in the wide sense) are descendants of a southern branch of Levantina , which invaded Arabia and Northern Africa in the Miocene. With regard to the Arabian group, which is represented in our phylogeny by L. symensi Neubert, 1998 , this scenario is compatible with our dated phylogeny ( Fig. 4 ). However, our phylogenetic analyses strongly indicate that Gyrostomella is not related to the Eastern Mediterranean Levantina , but to the Maghrebian radiation of Helicinae , more specifically to Maurohelix from the Atlas Mountains ( Figs 3 , 4 ). Thus, the occurrence of Gyrostomella in the Nefusa Mountains in Libya could have originated from an eastward long-distance dispersal over about 800 km from the Atlas Mountains ( Fig. 2 ). Alternatively, the disjunct distribution of Gyrostomella in Libya and Algeria could be a relict of a formerly wider range of the lineage, which became fragmented as a consequence of aridification processes and the spread of the Saharan desert during the late Miocene or early Pliocene ( Zhang et al. , 2014 ). Along with Eremina , which reaches the southern parts of Israel in the Middle East and dispersed also along the East African coast southwards to Cape Guardafui in Somalia and the western part of the Arabian Peninsula ( Verdcourt, 1960 ; Neubert, 1998 ), it represents an eastern outpost of the Maghrebian radiation of Helicinae . In Tripolitania, the Western and Eastern Mediterranean elements overlap, but Western Mediterranean land snail taxa dominate. Besides Gyrostomella , further Western Mediterranean land snail taxa represented in Tripolitania are Ferussacia carnea (Risso, 1826) , Sphincterochila candidissima (Draparnaud, 1801) , Xerosecta Monterosato, 1892 and Ganula Gittenberger, 1970 , whereas Xerocrassa Monterosato, 1892 , Xeromunda Monterosato, 1892 and Helix pronuba Westerlund & Blanc, 1879 are Eastern Mediterranean taxa ( Sturany, 1909 ; Alzona, 1940 ; Neubert, 2014 ). In contrast, Eastern Mediterranean taxa predominate in the Cyrenaica region adjoining to the east.