Heterobranchia


Heterobranchia, the heterobranchs, is a taxonomic clade of snails and slugs, which includes marine, aquatic and terrestrial gastropod mollusks.
Heterobranchia is one of the main clades of gastropods. Currently Heterobranchia comprises three informal groups: the lower heterobranchs, the opisthobranchs and the pulmonates.
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Diversity

The three subdivisions of this large clade are quite diverse:

Older taxonomy

The families currently included in Heterobranchia have historically been placed in many different parts of the taxonomic class of gastropods. Earlier authors considered Heterobranchia to consist of only marine gastropods, and conceptualized it as a borderline category, intermediate between the Opisthobranchia & Pulmonata, and all the other gastropods.
The category Heterostropha within the Heterobranchia, which includes such families as Architectonicidae, the sundial or staircase snails, is primarily characterized by a shell which has a heterostrophic protoconch, in other words the apical whorls are coiled in the opposite plane to the adult whorls. The classification of this group was revised by Ponder & Warén in 1988.
According to the older taxonomy of the Gastropoda the Heterobranchia were ranked as a superorder.

2005 taxonomy

Heterobranchia is currently one of the main clades of gastropods. For a detailed taxonomy, see Taxonomy of the Gastropoda #Clade Heterobranchia.

2010 taxonomy

Jörger et al. have redefined major groups within the Heterobranchia: they created the new clades Euopisthobranchia and Panpulmonata.
A cladogram showing phylogenic relations of Heterobranchia as proposed by Jörger et al. :