Cepaea nemoralis
| Grove snail Cepaea nemoralis |
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|---|---|
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| Cepaea nemoralis | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): |
clade Heterobranchia clade Euthyneura |
| Superfamily: | Helicoidea |
| Family: | Helicidae |
| Genus: | Cepaea |
| Species: | C. nemoralis |
| Binomial name | |
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Cepaea nemoralis (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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clade Euthyneura
clade Panpulmonata
clade Eupulmonata
clade Stylommatophora
informal group Sigmurethra
The grove snail or brown-lipped snail (Cepaea nemoralis) is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc. It is one of the most common species of land snail in Europe, and has been introduced to North America.
Cepaea nemoralis is the type species of the genus Cepaea. It is used as a model organism in citizen science projects.
Cepaea nemoralis is among the largest and, because of its polymorphism and bright colours, one of the best-known snails in Western Europe. The colour of the shell of Cepaea nemoralis is very variable; it can be reddish, brownish, yellow or whitish, with or without one or more dark-brown colour bands. Names for every colour variant were established in the 1800s; but this system was later abandoned.
The thickened and slightly out-turned apertural lip usually dark brown, rarely white. The umbilicus is narrow but open in juveniles, and closed in adults. The surface of the shell is semi-glossy, and it has from 4½ to 5½ whorls. The width of the shell is 18–25 mm. The height of the shell is 12–22 mm.
The similar species Cepaea vindobonensis is less intensely coloured. The grove snail is closely related to the white-lipped snail, C. hortensis, shares much the same habitat, and has similar shell colour and pattern. The grove snail is usually the larger of the two species when mature, but the principal difference is that the adult grove snail almost always has a dark brown lip to its shell, whilst adults of Cepaea hortensis almost always have a white lip. However, a morph of the grove snail also has a white lip. In areas where lip colour is variable, dissection is necessary: the structure of the love dart is quite different in the two species, as are the vaginal mucus glands. A cross-section of the love dart shows a cross with simple blades, whereas that of C. hortensis has bifurcated blades.C. hortensis has 4 or more branches of body light with reddish or brownish hue, upper side often slightly darker, tentacles darker and 15 mm long.
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