Iraklimelania Willmann, 1981

Neubauer, Thomas A. & Wesselingh, Frank P., 2023, The Early Pleistocene freshwater mollusks of the Denizli Basin (Turkey): a new long-lived lake fauna at the crossroads of Pontocaspian and Aegean-Anatolian realms, Zitteliana 97, pp. 53-88 : 53

Genus Iraklimelania Willmann, 1981

Type species.

Iraklimelania levis Willmann, 1981; by original designation.

Remarks.

The revised attribution of Iraklimelania , originally tentatively placed in " Micromelaniidae " by Willmann (1981), to Caspiinae is based on two pillars. First, the protoconch sculpture, with the malleate surface bearing faint spiral striae and a thickened terminal portion, reminds of species of Caspiinae ( Anistratenko et al. 2021). Extant Pontocaspian members are typically characterized by an increasing sculpture intensity toward the end and the upper whorl half of the protoconch, as well as sculpture-free triangle at the P/T boundary ( Anistratenko et al. 2021), which is missing though in the Turkish material. Second, the close morphological similarity to species of Graecoanatolica , recently placed in Caspiinae as well, supports a classification in that subfamily.