The land snails (Mollusca, Gastropoda) of Kea island (Aegean, Greece).

Background: Kea is the westernmost island of the Cyclades and is located between Syros and Attica, in central Greece. In this work, we have resampled the island after 43 years - i.e.

High-throughput degraded DNA sequencing of subfossil shells of a critically endangered stenoendemic land snail in the Aegean.

High-throughput sequencing has enabled the comprehensive genetic exploration of biological diversity, especially by using natural history collections to study hard-to-find, threatened or even extinct-in-the-wild taxa. Mollusk shells are under-exploited as a source for DNA-based approaches, despite their apparent advantages in the field of conservation genetics. More particularly, degraded DNA techniques combined with high-throughput sequencing have never been used to gain insights about the DNA preservation in land snail subfossil or historical shells.

A contribution to knowledge on the terrestrial malacofauna of the Kastellorizo (Megisti) island group (SE Greece).

Background: The Kastellorizo island group (in the Dodecanese, Greece) is situated in the southeast corner of the Aegean Archipelago. It consists of twenty islets, of which the three largest (Kastellorizo, Ro and Strongyli) and seven smaller ones belong to Greece. Knowledge of the malacofauna on the islands is relatively poor.

Unraveling the evolutionary history of the Chilostoma Fitzinger, 1833 (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Pulmonata) lineages in Greece.

The land snails of the genus Chilostoma Fitzinger, 1833 that includes, in Greece, the (sub)genera Cattania, Josephinella and Thiessea, are highly diversified and present high levels of endemism. However, their evolutionary history is unknown and their taxonomy is complex and continuously revised. The aim of this study is to investigate the phylogenetic relationships of the lineages of the genus Chilostoma distributed in Greece based on partial DNA sequences of two mitochondrial DNA (16S rRNA and COI) genes.

Terrestrial slugs (Gastropoda, Pulmonata) in the NATURA 2000 areas of Cyprus island.

Terrestrial slugs of the Island of Cyprus were recently studied in the framework of a study of the whole terrestrial malacofauna of the island. The present work was carried out in the Natura 2000 conservation areas of the island in 155 sampling sites over three years (2004-2007). Museum collections as well as literature references were included.