Niobrara ambersnail [SEP] parent taxon
Niobrara ambersnail
Oxyloma haydeni haydeni, common name the Niobrara ambersnail, is a subspecies of small, air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Succineidae, the amber snails.
The Kanab ambersnail is often regarded as a subspecies of this species. As with other species of ambersnail, it is distinguished by slight differences in shell morphology.
Distribution.
The snail is found in Northern Arizona and the Kanab Canyon area of southern Utah. It is also found in Wyoming, where it is
1992, 1995) suggest that the Kanab ambersnail may deserve full species status. Earle Spamer (Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pers. comm. 1994) stated that although current published mollusk checklists (Turgeon et al. 1988 and Groombridge 1993) treat the Kanab ambersnail at species level rather that as a subspecies, nonetheless, until the criteria are derived (and published) by which the taxon can be known to be a separate species, it should continue to be called by its original name,