Collecting minute land snails from limestone areas during the study in Malaysian Borneo

Six new species of unique land snails whose shells are covered with what look like scales have been described from the biodiversity hotspot of Malaysian Borneo by scientists Mohd Zacaery Khalik, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Kasper Hendriks, University of Groningen, Jaap Vermeulen, JK Art & Science, and Prof Menno Schilthuizen, Naturalis Biodiversity Center. Their paper is published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Thanks to their conspicuous structures, the mollusks have been added to a brand new species group of land snails to be commonly known as the 'scaly' snails, so that they can be set apart from the rest in the genus Georissa. Why it is that only some of the species in the genus sport the unique 'scales', remains unknown.

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Credit: Mohd Zacaery Khalik

Synoptic view of 13 "scaly" land snails in the genus Georissa.

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Amazing, love the shells too

It's fascinating to think how many creatures and species have still gone undiscovered

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