Critically Endangered
Helix ceratina
Tyrrhenaria ceratina
Helix ceratina is a land snail in the family Helicidae (order Stylommatophora) — Tyrrhenaria ceratina, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to France.
Appearance
For a species of Helix, H. Ceratina is a small snail of shell diameter max. 24 mm (28 in fossil individuals). The shell is olive-brown, with darker bands, and thin-walled. Even so, the species was distributed more widely in prehistoric times, as fossil shells were found at three other localities on the shore.
During dry and hot periods, the snails dig up to 60 cm into the soil and form a convex, calcareous epiphragm. Eggs are large (diameter 5-7 mm) and ovoid.
Range and habitat
This species is endemic to Corsica. The inhabited area was estimated at 0.34 km2. It inhabits biotopes on granitic sands near the shore, with vegetation characterized by Crucianella maritima, Scrophularia ramosissima and Genista salzmannii ssp. Salzmannii.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Helix ceratina feeds on fresh leaves in the spring, but the diet changes to decaying plant matter in the autumn. Genista salzmannii is the most important part of the diet (found in 80% of faeces). Matthiola sinuata, Jasione montana and grasses are also eaten.
In crisis
The only known extant population lives at Campo dell'Oro near the Ajaccio airport. Repeated searches since the 1990s did not reveal any populations additional to that near Ajaccio.
Helix ceratina is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Helix ceratina, Wikidata item Q2726957. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
