Morphometric analysis to discriminate between species: The case of the Megalobulimus leucostoma complex

Abstract

Plasticity of conchological characters had led to erroneous descriptions and the accumulation of synonyms making difficult the discrimination among species. The land snail genus Megalobulimus is an example of this problem. Megalobulimus leucostoma (Sowerby, 1835) has three subspecies which are difficult to differentiate by using the original descriptions. The aim of this paper is to discriminate among the subspecies of M. leucostoma by using morphometric and distribution analyses. Both provide substantial differences between M. l. leucostoma and M. l lacunosus that would not support the subspecies status of the former. Megalobulimus leucostoma weyrauchi fits into the great conchological variability of M. l .leucostoma; also the sympatric status between these two subspecies would not support the subspecies status of the former, and M. l. weyrauchi should be considered as part of M. l. leucostoma.