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ABSTRACT
The book deals with freshwater molluscs of the families Acroloxidae Thiele, 1931 and
Lymnaeidae Rafinesque, 1815 that inhabit waterbodies of Western Siberia. It is the first part of
the “Key to freshwater Gastropoda of Western Siberia” that will be published in several fasci-
cles. The authors team aimed for providing readers with detailed descriptions of limpet and
pond snails of the region along with keys for their determination and brief notes concerning
ecology, geographic distribution and nomenclature of lymnaeid and acroloxid species.
The authors have examined major malacological collections of Russia (those of the Zoo-
logical Institute RAS in Sankt-Petersburg, the Zoological Museum of the Institute of Plant and
Animal Ecology, Uralian branch RAS, Yekaterinburg) as well as their own vast collections that
are housed in the Museum of Siberian Aquatic Molluscs (Omsk State Pedagogical University).
Total amount of materials used in the study is nearly 45500 specimens of acroloxids and lym-
naeids that are kept as either dried shells or fixed whole animals. In some cases, examination of
the holotypes (syntypes, lectotypes) or their high-quality photos was possible.
Within the framework of this study, we call ‘Western Siberia’ a region including plain
parts of the Irtysh and Ob’ river basins as well as the westernmost parts of the Irtysh basin that
are situated within the borders of the Uralian mountain country. Though physical geographers
do usually consider the Altai Mountain region as a part of the Western Siberia, we did not fol-
low it as the Altaian malacofauna has a quite peculiar character and origin. Its species composi-
tion is more similar to that of the Sayan Mountain region than to the malacofauna of the plain
part of Western Siberia.
The authors followed the recent Russian taxonomy of the order Lymnaeiformes (= Hygro-
phyla auct.) developed by Dr. Ya.I. Starobogatov and his disciples and collaborators (Star-
obogatov, 1967, 1970; Beriozkina, Starobogatov, 1988; Starobogatov et al., 2004). The spe-
cies-level system used here is taken from papers by N.D. Kruglov & Ya.I. Starobogatov (1991,
1993a, b; Kruglov, 2005) with some original corrections and additions caused by our studies of
taxonomy and nomeclatorial status of Western Siberian lymnaeid snails.
As a result, we believe that the waterbodies of Western Siberian region are inhabited by
40 species of the two families (3 acroloxid and 37 lymnaeid species). Another 6 species of
Lymnaeidae were mentioned from waterbodies of adjacent territories and are included into this
edition as well. Possible, some of these lymnaeids will be discovered in Western Siberia in fu-
ture.
The book consists of two parts. The first one includes several chapters where morphology,
both internal and external, ecology and classification of freshwater pulmonates are briefly re-
viewed. Further, main research methods for freshwater molluscs, including taxonomic ones,
are described in the first part.