title: Recent expansion and relic survival: Phylogeography of the land snail genus Helix (Mollusca, Gastropoda) from south to north Europe.
abstract: Little is known about the evolutionary history of Helix, despite the fact that it includes the largest land snails in the western Palaearctic, some of which (e.g. H. pomatia Linnaeus, 1758) are valuable human food. We compared two groups of Helix with apparently contrasting evolutionary histories: the widespread species H. pomatia and the group distributed along the Italian Apennine chain, a relatively unknown set of species with a restricted distribution over a range of altitudes. To reconstruct the evolutionary trajectories of these two groups, we analysed morphological (shell and genitalia) and molecular characters (mitochondrial and nuclear markers) in a total of 59 populations from northern and central Europe (H. pomatia) and along the Apennine chain (various species). We also reconstructed the phylogeny and the evolutionary history of the genus by combining our data with that currently available in the literature. We found that spatial changes did not merely imply fragmentation of populations, but also implied environmental changes (woodlands vs. grasslands) that may have triggered the observed phenotypic diversification. We also found that Anatolia is the ancestral range of Helix and is therefore an important area for the Palaearctic diversity. The results provide insights into the evolutionary history of species richness and more generally into the processes that may have shaped the distribution and diversification of these organisms across Europe and the peri-Mediterranean area.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL, Northern Ireland, UK. Electronic address: fiorentino.viviana@gmail.com.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Fiorentino
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, della Terra e dell'Ambiente, Sezione di Scienze Ambientali, Università di Siena, Via P.A. Mattioli 4, 53100 Siena, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Manganelli
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, della Terra e dell'Ambiente, Sezione di Scienze Ambientali, Università di Siena, Via P.A. Mattioli 4, 53100 Siena, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Giusti
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologia "Charles Darwin", Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Viale dell'Università 32, 00185 Roma, Italy.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ketmaier
mesh_terms: D060105:Animal Shells / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D000818:Animals; D002467:Cell Nucleus / Q000235:genetics; D007558:Italy; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D008928:Mitochondria / Q000235:genetics; D010641:Phenotype; D010802:Phylogeny; D058974:Phylogeography; D012908:Snails / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics
keywords: Helix; Land snails; Palaearctic diversity; Phylogeography