First records of Oxychilusalliarius and O.cellarius (Gastropoda, Stylommatophora, Oxychilidae) in Mexico: mtDNA identification and potential distributions.

Abstract

This paper reports the first Mexican records of Oxychilusalliarius (Puebla, State of Mexico, Mexico City) and O.cellarius (Mexico City), and expands the Mexican distribution of O.draparnaudi to Querétaro, Tlaxcala, and State of Mexico. These three introduced land snail species were identified by combining their genital anatomy and mitochondrial COI DNA sequence data. A two-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis of shell shape variation based on both apertural and apical views showed that there were no significant conchological differences between the three species except, to some degree, size. Using locality data of newly collected specimens, information from previous studies, and data retrieved from GBIF and iNaturalist, an analysis of the potential distributions of Oxychilus species in Mexico was conducted with an R implementation of Maxent. This showed that Oxychilus tends to occupy principally the Southern Highlands and the Transmexican Volcanic Belt Province.