In search of Corillaanax (Corillidae), rare and endemic land mollusc of the Western Ghats

The Western Ghats of India, running parallel to the West Coast of India, is one of the 34 biodiversity hotspots of the world (Myers et al., 2000) with amazing diversity and endemism of flora and fauna especially of vertebrates. However, diversity and endemism of invertebrates have not been studied except for certain charismatic taxa. This is particularly true for land snails of India, in general and in the Western Ghats in particular. The Indian land snail fauna is very diverse and to date 1,129 species have been reported from the country (Ramakrishna & Dey, 2010). There may be many more undescribed species, especially in the three biodiversity hotspots - the Western Ghats, part of the Himalayas and part of the Indo-Burma hotspot (which includes north-eastern Indian states). The Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot has 270 species representing 24 families and 58 genera (Aravind, 2005; Aravind et al., 2005) with 76 % endemicity. The ecology of many land snail species of the Western Ghats is still poorly known. Among many cryptic and interesting snail species is Corilla anax (Corillidae). The genus Corilla is represented by only one species in the Western Ghats (Fig. 1) and ten from Sri Lanka. The Natural History Museum, London, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels and ATREE, Bangalore, are collaborating in an effort to understand the evolutionary relationships between corillids from the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka.