Genus Bensonella Pilsbry & Vanatta, 1900

Bifidaria (Bensonella) Pilsbry & Vanatta, 1900: 591.

Boysidia (Bensonella) . Pilsbry 1917: 198.

Boysidia (Paraboysidia) Pilsbry, 1917: 174, 201.

Type species.

Pupa plicidens Benson, 1849, by original designation.

Remarks.

The generic status and diagnostic morphological characters of the type species were recently revised ( Páll-Gergely and White 2023). The type species was believed to possess ‘hooked’ teeth, i.e., apertural barriers forming hooks that point outside of the aperture (Pilsbry 1917). Later, when specimens without hooked apertural barriers were found in collections, normal and hooked teeth were hypothesised as intraspecific variability (Budha and Backeljau 2017). Páll-Gergely and White (2023) showed that the ‘real’ Bensonella plicidens was a species with normal (not hooked) barriers, while the Himalayan species with hooked teeth was an undescribed species ( Bensonella hooki Páll-Gergely, 2023). Since the ‘hooked’ and 'not hooked’ species are very similar in other shell characters, this trait could not be used as a diagnostic character for recognising Bensonella . Rather, this genus is diagnosed by a brownish shell with the last whorl attached to the penultimate whorl, and the presence of separate angular and parietal lamellae.

Since the type species of Bensonella and Paraboysidia ( Boysidia paviei Bavay & Dautzenberg, 1912) are very similar, the latter has been treated as a junior synonym of the former (Gittenberger et al. 2021; Páll-Gergely and White 2023).