Rodrigo B. Salvador

Rodrigo B. Salvador
University of Helsinki | HY · Finnish Museum of Natural History

PhD

About

188
Publications
147,874
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,567
Citations
Introduction
I am a biologist/paleontologist specializing in gastropods, particularly land snails. I'm interested in describing the world’s land snails and in understanding their evolutionary relationships, fossil record, and biogeographic history. I am also interested in sci comm and geek culture and I'm a co-founder of the Journal of Geek Studies (https://jgeekstudies.org/).
Additional affiliations
October 2022 - May 2024
UiT - The Arctic University of Norway
Position
  • Researcher
October 2021 - present
Tuhinga
Position
  • Editor
August 2021 - January 2023
Strombus
Position
  • Managing editor
Description
  • https://strombusjournal.org/
Education
October 2012 - October 2016
University of Tuebingen
Field of study
  • Paleontology
October 2009 - December 2011
University of São Paulo
Field of study
  • Malacology
March 2008 - April 2010

Publications

Publications (188)
Article
Full-text available
Natural history collections are now being championed as key to broad ecological studies, especially those involving human impacts in the Anthropocene. However, collections are going through a crisis that threatens their present and future value, going beyond underfunding/understaffing to a more damaging practice: current researchers are no longer d...
Article
Full-text available
Although terrestrial gastropods are remarkably diverse, our knowledge of them is still lacking, especially for species from the Global South. As such, new tools to help researchers collect data on these organisms are very welcome. With this in mind, we investigated Brazilian observations on iNaturalist to assess the feasibility of the data availabl...
Article
Full-text available
There is broad recognition by practicing taxonomists that the field is going through a crisis, which has been dubbed the “taxonomic impediment”. There are many aspects involved in said crisis, but publication practices in taxonomy are often neglected or relegated to the backseat. We provide an initial foray into this topic via a worldwide survey wi...
Article
Full-text available
The superfamily Orthalicoidea comprises approximately 2,000 species of terrestrial gastropods, mostly concentrated in the Neotropics but also present in southern Africa and Oceania. We provide a multi-marker molecular phylogeny of this superfamily, reassessing its family- and genus-level classification. We exclude two families from the group, Odont...
Article
Full-text available
We compiled taxonomic information about terrestrial gastropods in Brazil in an organized and user-friendly checklist that we hope will be useful for researchers and stakeholders alike. We also expect that it will serve as a springboard, garnering more interest and enabling a new wave of studies on this fauna, which has one the highest extinction ra...
Article
Full-text available
Biological rhythms are ubiquitous across the tree of life. Organisms must allocate their activities into moments of the day and of the season that will increase their probability of surviving and reproducing, which is done in the form of daily and annual rhythms. So far, the vast majority of studies on biological rhythms have focused on classical l...
Article
Full-text available
In her 1945 study on the Tertiary fossil mollusks of northeastern Mexico, Gardner listed only 2 taxa of land snails: Holospira eva Gardner, 1945 and "Helix" sp. The latter is recognized here as a new species of Lysinoe Adams & Adams, 1855 (Helicoidea, Xanthonychidae). The new species can be diagnosed from its congeners by its flattened shell profil...
Article
Full-text available
Phylogenetic analyses confirm the monophyly of a group of Drymaeus s.l. species that are characterised by tones of bluish or greenish colours of their bodies. This group is now considered as Antidrymaeus L. Germain, 1907, which was recently elevated from synonymy to generic status. Spe- cies of this group have been found from Florida to Brazil and...
Article
Full-text available
The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian mega...
Preprint
Full-text available
The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classification. In this context, the B Brazilian meg...
Article
Full-text available
In 2022, we published an article in this journal entitled “Cave-dwelling gastropods (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of Brazil: state of the art and conservation”. In that study, we compiled all the available information about cave-dwelling gastropods in the country, including terrestrial and freshwater species. We focused on the troglobites but also include...
Article
Full-text available
We report a new species of shearwater, Ardenna buchananbrowni sp. nov., from the Pliocene of New Zealand. It is both the smallest and oldest known diving member of the genus, demonstrating that this now abundant form of shearwater has had a long presence in southern oceans. Ardenna buchananbrowni sp. nov. is among the few extinct shearwaters descri...
Article
Full-text available
For over 200 years, the name molluscum contagiosum-a dermatological disease-has unfairly associated molluscs (the second largest group of animals on the planet) with this highly contagious infectious disease. Herein, arguments are presented demonstrating the serious problem of continuing to use this name, including animal welfare concerns. Thus, to...
Article
Full-text available
Speciation research–the scientific field focused on understanding the origin and diversity of species–has a long and complex history. While relevant to one another, the specific goals and activities of speciation researchers are highly diverse, and scattered across a collection of different perspectives. Thus, our understanding of speciation will b...
Article
Full-text available
The land snail genus Pilsbrylia Hylton Scott, 1952 has been recently shown to not belong to the superfamily to which it was originally assigned (i.e., the Orthalicoidea), instead pointing out a relationship with the Clausilioidea. In this study, we included the type species of the genus in a multi-marker molecular phylogenetic framework to reassess...
Article
The genus Canaridiscus M.R. Alonso & Ibáñez, 2011, endemic to the Canary Islands, has a curious taxonomic history and is currently defined based only on its peculiar genital anatomy. Its relationship to European Discus spp. and other members of the family Discidae is unclear and its status as a distinct genus remains tentative. In the present study...
Article
Full-text available
The expression ‘you need to know to conserve’ is a well-known cliche among biologists. Documenting the richness of a group of organisms is the first step towards understanding biodiversity and preparing efficient conservation plans. In this context, many efforts have been made to quantify the number of species on Earth and estimate the number of sp...
Article
Full-text available
Only 17 endemic land snail species are known so far on the Lesser Antillean island of Martinique, most of which are macrogastropods that are easily visible, and thus, easily collectable. On the other hand, species of microgastropods remain undersampled and overlooked. Based on recently collected shells from Mount Vauclin, we describe a new species...
Article
Gastropod faunas from the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary transition in the well-dated Songliao Basin (north-east China, East Asia) have been studied. In total, 673 specimens were counted, of which about 80% (n = 538) could be identified. In all, eight species, belonging to six genera, have been identified, including Hydrobia? datangensis, Mes...
Preprint
Full-text available
The silvana -beds are the main component of the Upper Freshwater Molasse (“Obere Süßwassermolasse” or OSM) in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, named after the land snail Palaeotachea silvana (Klein, 1853). After initial disputes in the literature, in the 1920’s, malacologist Wilhelm Wenz better defined the silvana -beds lithology and its...
Article
Full-text available
The catalogued collection of South American terrestrial gastropods, including the Caribbean ABC islands and Trinidad & Tobago, of the Auckland War Memorial Museum (AM), New Zealand, is discussed here. In total, 264 specimen lots from South America were found in the AM collection, including eight type lots. Twelve of the specimens represent new geog...
Article
Full-text available
Augustus Hamilton (1853-1913) was a New Zealand ethnologist and naturalist who amassed a significant collection of fossils, mostly of birds, during his career. Today, those fossils are housed in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (NMNZ). While some fossils have been catalogued and integrated into the collection of the NMNZ, a large part re...
Article
Full-text available
Gastropod samples were collected during expeditions to caves in Bahia state, northeastern Brazil, and are studied herein. Collection took place over the past five years, and gastropods were found in 14 caves distributed across six different municipalities: Campo Formoso, Carinhanha, Coribe, Feira da Mata, Central, and Ituaçu. A total of 19 species-...
Article
Full-text available
The impacts of biological invasions remain poorly known for some habitats, regions and taxa. To date, there has been no comprehensive effort to review and synthesize the impacts of invasive mollusc species in South America. In this paper, we provide a synoptic view on what is known on documented socio-ecological impacts of aquatic no-native mollusc...
Article
Full-text available
A new species of giant petrel, Macronectes tinae sp. nov., is described from the Pliocene deposits of South Taranaki, New Zealand. The holotype is a near complete skull and the paratype a fragmentary left humerus; both come from the Tangahoe Formation, dating from the late Pliocene (Piacenzian or “Waipipian”; age estimated as ca. 3.36–3.06 Ma). The...
Article
Full-text available
A new species of megasnail, Megalobulimus diluvianus sp. nov., is herein described based on subfossil material from limestone caves in the area of Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais state, southeastern Brazil. The specimens come from a context of archaeological strata of early Holocene age. Considering the morphological features of the shell, the new specie...
Article
Full-text available
Bioinvasions are one of the main causes of the decline of native biodiversity. Indothais lacera (Born, 1778) is a carnivorous gastropod, native to the Indo-Pacific. We present the first records of I. lacera on the Brazilian coast and the first record of this invasive species in the Western Atlantic. The specimens were found in two locations in the...
Article
Full-text available
Ecosystems provide benefits to humans, including provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. However, invasive species can threaten ecosystem well-functioning and services provided. One invasive species with such potential is the New Zealand mud snail (NZMS) Potamopyrgus antipodarum. The aims of this study are focused on the quantitative revie...
Article
Full-text available
The genus Radiodiscus includes minute terrestrial snails occurring throughout the American continent. We assessed the conservation status of eight poorly known Chilean Radiodiscus species using the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and NatureServe categories and criteria. Under the IUCN guidelines the species were assessed using...
Article
Full-text available
The girdled snail Hygromia cinctella originates from southern Europe but has been introduced to countries in northern Europe and, more recently, to Aotearoa New Zealand. In the latter country, the girdled snail was first noted in 2015 in Wellington, but it has since spread to other regions of the North Island. We report here the rapid spread of thi...
Article
Full-text available
Recent collection efforts in caves of Mato Grosso state, Brazilian Midwest, have brought to light specimens of four Ne-ritimorpha and Stylommatophora land-snail species previously unrecorded from that state: Helicina fulva d'Orbigny, 1835 (Family Helicinidae), Streptartemon abunaensis (F. Baker, 1914) and Streptartemon decipiens (Crosse, 1865) (fam...
Article
Full-text available
In an ongoing study on deep-water Vetigastropoda from SE-NE Brazil, the remarkably similar appearances of two supposedly unrelated species drew our attention. The description of Calliostoma frumari García, 2007 was based on four empty shells collected 37 km off Key West, Florida Keys, USA, by a private expedition. Watson’s (1879) description of Bas...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Descripción y actividad del eMIAS (especialistas sobre Moluscos Introducidos en América del Sur)
Article
Full-text available
The movement of species is among the most serious environmental threats of the new millennium, as the transplantation of species beyond their native or historical range has intensified in the last five decades. Traditionally, studies on bioinvasions have focused on species that have been introduced, deliberately or accidentally, to biogeographic re...
Poster
Full-text available
Veintinueve especialistas en Moluscos Introducidos de América del Sur (eMIAS), de siete países, trabajan en forma cooperativa desde el año 2016, con el objetivo incrementar y fortalecer el conocimiento de la malacofauna no-nativa y trasplantada, con la cual se busca prevenir y controlar los impactos que provocan estas especies. Cada uno de los inte...
Article
Full-text available
The exotic Japanese jumping snail, Ovachlamys fulgens, was first recorded in Santa Catarina state, Brazil, in 2013. Based on data gathered from the literature, natural history collections, field samplings, and the iNaturalist platform, we assess its current distribution in the country. Our data show that the jumping snail has had a dramatic range e...
Article
Full-text available
Idiopyrgus is a relict genus of freshwater snails from Brazil traditionally classified in the family Pomatiopsidae. Herein, we use molecular data from newly acquired specimens to test that classification through Bayesian inference phylogenetic analysis. We conclude that Idiopyrgus belongs in the Gondwanan family Tomichiidae, together with the Afric...
Article
Pupilloidea is a diverse group of land snails, most of which are of minute size. Because of that, Paleogene pupil-loid fossils are often overlooked and scarcely studied, partly because of a historical collection bias against small-sized fossils and partly due to the preservation bias against their fragile shells. The Borgloon Formation in Belgium (...
Article
Full-text available
An up-to-date list of exclusively cave-dwelling gastropod species recorded in Brazil is presented including updated taxonomy, detailed geographic information, and illustration of types. The list includes 18 cave-exclusive (troglobitic) gastropods encompassing 15 land and three freshwater species, with the status of further species pending additiona...
Article
Four gastropod species including two new species (?Tinnyea sp., Cyclophoridae gen. et sp. indet., Metalycaeus fossilis n. sp., and Tortaxis zhangpuensis n. sp.) are described from the mid-Miocene Zhangpu amber. Among them, ?Tinnyea sp. is potentially the first fossil record of this group in lake systems of East Asia, outside of Mediterranean and Pa...
Article
The genus Mesoneritina was first described to contain a single fossil neritid from the Lower Cretaceous of Nebraska, USA. Further Jurassic and Cretaceous neritids from the USA, Greenland, Europe and China were later classified in this genus. However, while the North American species all share similar morphologies, the Chinese forms seem to be a dis...
Article
Full-text available
The punctoid land snail family Charopidae, as currently defined, is a paraphyletic assemblage of taxa with Gondwanan distribution. It is represented in Africa largely by the pinwheels (genus Trachycystis and allies) and afrodontas (genus Afrodonta and allies), as well as a few additional genera, such as Reticulapex, Pilula, and Helenoconcha. Herein...
Article
Full-text available
Herein, we revise an extensive set of mollusc fossils from the Upper Freshwater Molasse deposits of Öhningen palaeolake (SW Germany; Middle Miocene, MN7). Based on material housed in paleontological collections in Europe and North America, we present the first thorough systematic account of the phylum from this historic locality. A total of ten spe...
Article
Full-text available
Fernando de Noronha (henceforth ‘Noronha’) is an oceanic archipelago of volcanic origin, located ~350 km off the northeast coast of Brasil (Fig. 1). The eponymous main island was an important midway port in the Portuguese exploitation of Brasilian resources during the 16th and 17th centuries (Lins & Silva, 2013). The island was also briefly occupie...
Article
Full-text available
The New Zealand huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) had the most extreme bill sexual dimorphism among modern birds. Given the quick extinction of the species, the cause of the dimorphism could only be hypothesised to reflect different trophic niches and reduce male/female competition. We tested that hypothesis by combining museum specimens, geometric m...
Article
Full-text available
A new species of rail, Gallirallus astolfoi sp. nov., is described from Rapa Island (Rapa Iti), French Polynesia. The holotype (and single known specimen) is a left tarsometatarsus recovered from Tangarutu Cave. This rail species was apparently endemic to Rapa Iti and potentially flightless. It became extinct after human colonisation of the island.
Article
Full-text available
The Fernando de Noronha Archipelago off NE Brazil harbors a few unique terrestrial gastropod species. One of them, the monotypic genus Ridleyconcha Christensen, 2020, presents such an idiosyncratic shell morphology that, in the 130 years since its description, it has been variously allocated in unrelated families: Streptaxidae, Endodontidae, Charop...
Article
Full-text available
The terrestrial and freshwater malacofauna of southern Bahia is little known, especially in comparison to the well-studied eastern portion of the state covered by remnants of Atlantic Forest. We present here a synopsis of all gastropod species known from the central southern region of Bahia state, known as 'Centro-Sul Baiano' , focusing on four mun...
Article
Full-text available
Despite the absence of cuttlefish in Aotearoa New Zealand waters, cuttlebones and cuttlebone fragments have been reported and collected in the country since the early twentieth century. Not all could be reliably identified. As such, here we review all cuttlebone material collected from New Zealand shores available in natural history collections, as...
Article
Our results present a taxonomic and palaeoecological study on non-marine gastropods from the latest Cretaceous to Paleocene deposits of the Pingyi Basin, Shandong Province, eastern China. These gastropods are systematically described: three species belonging to three genera including Physa dongtaiensis Gu, 1989, Hydrobia datangensis Yü, 1977, and t...
Article
Full-text available
A specimen of Solaropsidae from the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (Philadelphia, USA) was recognised as a potential new species based on shell morphology. With support from a multi-locus molecular phylogenetic analysis, a new species is described here: Solaropsis penthesileae sp. nov. It is native to the Amazon...
Article
Full-text available
Despite its natural focus on the New Zealand region, the malacological collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (NMNZ), also includes a variety of specimens from elsewhere in the world, including a fair share of South American specimens. Examination of this material reveals valuable distributional data for several species, as well...
Article
Full-text available
The terrestrial gastropod family Thysanophoridae is reported herein for the first time from Brazil. The new record stems from a 2015 survey in the Reserva Biológica de Pedra Talhada, a protected Atlantic Forest fragment in Alagoas state, in the northeastern part of the country. Only two empty juvenile shells were found, and the specimens can be ten...
Article
Full-text available
The terrestrial gastropod family Thysanophoridae is reported herein for the first time from Brazil. The new record stems from a 2015 survey in the Reserva Biológica de Pedra Talhada, a protected Atlantic Forest fragment in Alagoas state, in the northeastern part of the country. Only two empty juvenile shells were found, and the specimens can be ten...
Article
The Chatham Island Duck, Anas chathamica, is one of many New Zealand bird species that became extinct after Polynesian arrival. The Chatham Island Duck was a large flightless bird, with salt glands on its skull, which led to the hypothesis that it lived in a marine habitat. We tested this hypothesis using a combination of stable isotope analysis (c...
Article
Full-text available
A new species belonging to the hitherto monotypic genus Spiripockia Simone, 2012 of cave-dwelling freshwater gastropods is described. Spiripockia umbraticola sp. nov. is diagnosable by its more turriform beige to dark brown shell, less expanded body whorl and peristome, the teleoconch sculpture consisting of thorn-like triangular structures, the pr...
Article
Repeated scuba diving visits to Saba, Caribbean Netherlands, from 2011 to 2020 allowed us to add 51 species of marine molluscs to the island’s species checklist, in an attempt to get closer to having a full list of all the species that live around the island. Th e new records include 40 gastropods (over half of which are sea slugs), seven bivalves,...
Article
A non-marine gastropod fauna from the continuous uppermost Campanian to Maastrichtian deposits of the Jiaolai Basin (eastern North China) was studied. Four species attributed to four genera and an undetermined species were described, including Truncatella jiaozhouensis sp. nov., ?Pomatiopsidae gen. et sp. indet., ?Hydrobia datangensis Yü, 1977, Val...
Article
Full-text available
Samples of terrestrial gastropods were collected year-round in seven caves in Presidente Olegário municipality, Minas Gerais state, southeastern Brazil, during several expeditions from 2012 to 2014. Twenty-four taxa (plus a single freshwater species), mainly stylommatophorans, were found in the material. The following species are reported for the f...
Article
Full-text available
In 1900, Henry Suter, a New Zealand malacologist, described six land snail taxa from South America, mostly from Brazil. These taxa received little further attention from malacologists and the unusual depository of its type specimens (New Zealand) caused much confusion in the literature. Suter’s types and taxa are thus revisited in the present work....
Preprint
Land snails in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber have aroused interest from palaeontologists in recent years. Here we describe three newly discovered species and a new genus belonging to families Pupinidae and Diplommatinidae: Cretatortulosa cretakachinensis sp. nov., Rhaphaulus zhuoi sp. nov. and Pulchraspira teneristoma gen. et sp. nov., using classic...
Article
Full-text available
Good science communication should give the public the tools to make informed decisions and take action, which can be particularly important for nature conservation. The crisis in invertebrate conservation might be rooted in public prejudices against invertebrate animals, which are perceived as the unpopular 97% of Earth’s animal biodiversity. As su...
Article
Full-text available
New collection efforts in the limestone caves of Parque Nacional Cavernas do Peruaçu, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, has brought to light specimens belonging to three orthalicoid land snail species previously unrecorded from that state: Kora nigra Simone, 2015 and Kora rupestris Salvador & Simone, 2016 (Bulimulidae), and Leiostracus subtuszonatus (Pil...
Article
Full-text available
The Brasilian territory is very extensive and harbors ~20,000caves, over half of which are calcareous (Fig. 1; CECAV, 2020). A reduced number of the ~ 700 terrestrial and nearly260 freshwater gastropod species reported from Brasil (Simone, 2006; Birckolz et al., 2016; Salvador, 2019) inhabit cave environments exclusively. Since the description of t...
Article
Full-text available
The molluscan fauna of southwestern Brazilian Amazon is poorly known due to the lack of focused collection efforts in the region since the early 20 th century. The present study provides an inventory of the terrestrial gastropods from a forest fragment in the eastern Acre state, Brazil: the Reserva Florestal Humaitá. Live specimens and empty shells...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract. The purpose of this application, under Article 23.9.5 of the Code, is to conserve the specific name of Helix spirorbis Deshayes, 1859 (currently Scolodonta spirorbis), a junior primary homonym of Helix spirorbis Linnaeus, 1758 (currently Anisus spirorbis). These names are currently in use, respectively, for species in two different famili...
Article
Full-text available
The classification of terrestrial sundial snails has a long and contentious history; they have been diversely classified in Camaenidae, Pleurodontidae, Polygyridae, and also in their own family, Solaropsidae. Two genera have been recently removed from Solaropsidae (Polygyratia Gray, 1847 and Ridleya Ancey, 1901), but the status of its 3 remaining g...