Helix urnula Pfeiffer, 1855

Brook, Fred J. & Ablett, Jonathan D., 2019, Type material of land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) described from New Zealand by taxonomists in Europe and North America between 1830 and 1934, and the history of research on the New Zealand land snail fauna from 1824 to 1917, Zootaxa 4697 (1), pp. 1-117 : 82

Helix urnula Pfeiffer, 1855

Pl. 9, fig. H

Pfeiffer, 1855a. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, pt. 22: 49.

Type material: Syntypes (3), NHMUK 1966136 (dry shell material); ex Museum Cuming (Acc. no. 1829) .

Label details: ‘ urnula Pfr. New Zealand’

Type locality: ‘New Zealand’ ( Pfeiffer 1855a: 49).

Previous illustrations of type material: Reeve (1854 [in 1851–1854]: pl. 189, fig. 1306), Tryon (1885 [from Reeve 1854]: pl. 26, fig. 14).

Remarks: Helix urnula Reeve, 1854 and H. urnula Pfeiffer, 1855 are based on the same type material. Pfeiffer’s original description in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London issue for 1854 was not published until January 1855 ( Sclater & Waterhouse 1893), and was pre-empted by Reeve’s description published in July 1854. Authorship previously attributed to Pfeiffer (e.g., Pfeiffer 1859: 8; Hector 1873: 4; Hutton 1880: 22; Suter 1913b: 784; Powell 1930: 52; Powell 1979: 343; Spencer et al. 2009: 218), but Reeve (1854) has priority.

Taxonomy: Helix urnula Pfeiffer, 1855 is a junior primary homonym and an objective junior synonym of Wainuia urnula (Reeve, 1854) N. syn.