How many varieties of MTS?

Wycco

Wycco

Eat more pine trees
Apr 19, 2009
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Kim Jong Il
How many varieties of MTS and their tunnelling siblings are there?

The red ribbon (Melanoides tuberculatus) seems to be the most common... and the quilted Melania (Tarebia granifera) also fairly common.

I've read of a giant species reaching 3 inches long. Ones that look like red ribbons but have spikes on their shells. Lupin posted pictures of a related species with a black shell yesterday.

The tylos look quite similar- how closely related are they? (do they tunnel at all?)

I'm just curious... so often people talking about their MTS- but there appear to be quite a number of similar species out there.
 
As far as I have been around the hobby, I have seen about 5-6 different MTS. Currently have three different kinds here. I never discovered the last kind I have because I thought my tiger loaches had finished all of them because at that time, I fed them to my loaches and didn't bother anymore to see if I have remaining ones left. The purple ones I have, don't proliferate as quickly as the brown ones do. I wonder why this is the case.
 
i just have the plain Melanoides tuberculatus. i found lots of different similar snails listed under rabbit snails. i bet there are tons of types.
 
Intresting - do they look different?
 
The larger species of MTS coming out of Florida and nearby states appears to be Melanoides tuberculata formosensis. I have a couple shots in my gallery. I bought 6 adults between 2 and 3 inches long originally. These have now bred and I have hundreds of babies, some up to 1.5 inches. I don't know if any will ever reach the wild size, but they're definitely larger than the average MTS.
 
There's a lot of Thiaridae species out there, but the only one I call MTS is Melanoides tuberculatus. Quilted melanias are Quilted melanias, Tylos and Tylos.
 
There are hundreds of species in the family Thiaridae (casual glance at Zipcode Zoo says 376 in 31 genera) occurring all throughout the world. Melanoides, according to the same source, has 34 species.

I also know that there are multiple shell morphotypes within M. tuberculata.

Tylomelania, by the way, are not Thiarids. They belong to the same superfamily, Cerithioidea, but to a different family, Pachychilidae.

Here's an illustration (from this article) showing the range of physical variation in some African Thiarids:

thiaridtypes.jpg

keyi.jpg
 
That one top right looks like a fantastic shell configuration.

I'm guessing most of these arn't available in the pet trade though? Wouldn't have guessed Tylos were in a different family- they look remarkably similar.
 
I've seen the one you pointed out (F) in the trade... in Germany.
 
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