Andrusovia Brusina, 1902

Anistratenko, Vitaliy V., Neubauer, Thomas A., Anistratenko, Olga Yu., Kijashko, Pavel V. & Wesselingh, Frank P., 2021, A revision of the Pontocaspian gastropods of the subfamily Caspiinae (Caenogastropoda: Hydrobiidae), Zootaxa 4933 (2), pp. 151-197 : 158

Genus Andrusovia Brusina in Westerlund, 1903

Type species. Andrusovia dybowskii Brusina in Westerlund, 1903 (“1902”); by original designation. Caspian Sea, Recent.

Remarks. The genus Andrusovia represents one of the most enigmatic groups of the Caspian Sea gastropods. Four species have been described ( Westerlund 1903; Logvinenko & Starobogatov 1969; Starobogatov 2000), but the identity and validity of all was previously uncertain (Wesselingh et al. 1999). This was partly rooted in the absence of type material and partly in the short and ambiguous description provided for A. dybowskii by Brusina in Westerlund (1903). Because of the minute size, the shell morphology of Andrusovia has been studied in detail only recently and only based on fossil material ( Neubauer et al. 2018). Since no animal has ever been found alive, none of the four species has been investigated anatomically; even whether these snails have an operculum is unknown. The recent detection of the syntypes of A. dybowskii and paratypes of Logvinenko & Starobogatov (1969) and Starobogatov (2000) allows for a proper revision of the species involved for the first time. Based on the comparison of all type material and additional data available, we conclude that only a single species occurs today, A. dybowskii . For Pleistocene specimens previously attributed to A. brusinai by Neubauer et al. (2018), as well as for late Holocene specimens from the South Caspian Basin, we introduce new species.