In both directions: Expansions of European land snails to the north and south from glacial refugia

Aim: The location of glacial refugia and the timing of postglacial colonisations remain of interest because together they inform about the ability of species to track shifting climates. In the associated paper, we tested a hypothesis that a central European forest land snail species survived in a northern refugium, which was proposed based on fossil finds indirectly dated to the Last Glacial Maximum and Late Glacial. We assessed the credibility of our results by comparing them to those obtained from three other, broadly sympatric land snail species.
Location: Central Europe and the Balkans.
Taxon: Pulmonate land snails: Monachoides incarnatus (Hygromiidae) and Helix pomatia, Helix thessalica, and Caucasotachea vindobonensis (Helicidae).
Methods: We used continuous phylogeographic analysis of mitochondrial data to trace the origin of postglacially expanding lineages and direct radiocarbon dating to verify the presumed glacial presence of M. incarnatus on the territories of Czechia and Sl...