9 new sea snails named May 30, from Vietnam to West Africa
The Sunday May 30–31, 2026 window yielded zero non-marine taxa — Zootaxa, Phytotaxa, and all Pensoft journals are silent on weekends. All 9 confirmed registrations come from a single WoRMS batch: Malacologia Mostra Mondiale issue 131, a print-only Italian shell journal. Five new species from Vietnam's EEZ (2 harp shells, 3 sundial shells) by Nguyen Ngoc Thach; four taxa from Africa and Southeast Asia by Tiziano Cossignani, including a West African volute subspecies, a new Madagascan miter shell, a murex from Sumbawa, and a Philippine cowrie subspecies. All nine taxa are Not Evaluated by IUCN.
Sunday publishing windows in taxonomy are reliably thin. Major journals — Zootaxa, Phytotaxa, the Pensoft stable — don't schedule releases on weekends, and the 28-hour window from May 30–31, 2026 confirmed the pattern: no terrestrial animals, no plants, no fungi. What did arrive was a single batch of 9 new marine gastropod taxa (7 new species, 2 new subspecies) registered in WoRMS simultaneously at 11:50 UTC on May 30, all from issue 131 of Malacologia Mostra Mondiale — a niche Italian shell journal with no online edition and no DOI.
The registrations span five family-level groups, four countries of origin, and two authors: Vietnamese collector Nguyen Ngoc Thach and Italian collector Tiziano Cossignani. All nine taxa carry IUCN status "Not Evaluated." None of the original morphological descriptions, shell plates, or type-specimen depository data are publicly accessible; WoRMS records the names and type localities, and no more.
Five new species from Vietnam — Thach & Khoa, 2026
Nguyen Ngoc Thach, with co-author Khoa on two of the five, describes five new species from Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone in a single paper spanning pages 6–13 of issue 131. 1 Two belong to Harpidae (harp shells, order Neogastropoda) and three to Architectonicidae (sundial shells, subclass Heterobranchia) — a meaningful split, since Neogastropoda and Heterobranchia represent independent evolutionary lineages within Gastropoda.
| Species | Family | AphiaID | Named for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harpa cossignanii Thach, 2026 | Harpidae | 1894279 | Tiziano Cossignani 2 |
| Harpa davidmonsecouri Thach & Khoa, 2026 | Harpidae | 1894281 | David Monsecour 3 |
| Architectonica houarti Thach, 2026 | Architectonicidae | 1894282 | Roland Houart 4 |
| Architectonica philippeboucheti Thach & Khoa, 2026 | Architectonicidae | 1894283 | Philippe Bouchet 5 |
| Architectonica backeljaui Thach, 2026 | Architectonicidae | 1894285 | Thierry Backeljau 6 |
One naming detail stands out: Architectonica philippeboucheti honors Philippe Bouchet (MNHN Paris, senior malacologist and longtime WoRMS editor) — and Bouchet is the WoRMS editor who registered all nine taxa in this morning's batch. It is entirely routine for malacologists to honor colleagues whose work they respect; it is, however, a quietly circular arrangement when the honoree also holds the registration pen.
The paper also includes a nomenclatural note on Oophana thaitieni Thach (2025), though the specifics are inaccessible without the journal text.
Four new taxa from Africa and Southeast Asia — Cossignani, 2026
Tiziano Cossignani contributes four separate short papers to the same issue, each naming one taxon from a different region. Two are new species (Mitridae, Muricidae) and two are new subspecies — one of a prized West African volute, one of a collector-favorite cowrie. 7
| Species | Family | Locality | AphiaID | Named for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cymbium cymbium monnieri T. Cossignani, 2026 (subspecies) | Volutidae | Senegal (N. Atlantic) | 1894277 | Eric Monnier 8 |
| Roseomitra meli T. Cossignani, 2026 | Mitridae | Madagascar (Mozambique Channel) | 1894286 | Paolo Mel 9 |
| Chicoreus solae T. Cossignani, 2026 | Muricidae | Sumbawa Island, Indonesia | 1894289 | Marco Sola, Milan 10 |
| Leporicypraea mappa vezzaroi T. Cossignani, 2026 (subspecies) | Cypraeidae | Philippines (EEZ) | 1894291 | Jean-Pierre Vezzaro 11 |
A few taxonomic notes worth flagging:
- Cymbium cymbium (Linnaeus, 1758) is a large West African volutid (volute shell) endemic to the eastern Atlantic. The new subspecies monnieri from Senegal is described as morphologically distinct by Cossignani, who credits Eric Monnier for first noticing the differences. This is the only Atlantic taxon in the entire batch — the other eight are all Indo-Pacific. 8
- Roseomitra is a young genus, erected in 2018 by Fedosov, Herrmann, Kantor & Bouchet (Bouchet again) to accommodate certain mitrids within Neogastropoda. The type material for R. meli was collected in Madagascar in January 2023 and passed to Cossignani by Paolo Mel. 9
- Chicoreus (Montfort, 1810) is one of the most species-rich murex genera, known for elaborate fronds and spines. C. solae from Sumbawa Island in Indonesia's Lesser Sunda chain adds to an already crowded genus. 10
- Leporicypraea mappa (Linnaeus, 1758) — the map cowrie — is among the most recognized shells in any Indo-Pacific collection, named for the map-like dorsal patterning. Cossignani's vezzaroi subspecies from the Philippine EEZ occupies a single page (p. 23) in the journal. 11
Source note
Malacologia Mostra Mondiale is a print-only periodical aimed primarily at shell collectors; issue 131 carries no DOI and is not indexed by academic databases. All nine WoRMS entries cite the journal as the authority source, and all were created by Philippe Bouchet in a single registration event. The formal descriptions, shell plate images, and type-specimen depository data exist only in the printed volume, which was not accessible during this window. Thach and Cossignani are both prolific amateur shell taxonomists whose output is sometimes questioned by professional malacologists on grounds of insufficient morphological diagnosis — a concern that applies broadly to much of the shell-collector literature and does not reflect on any individual name in this batch specifically. Whether these nine names are subsequently accepted, synonymized, or revised is a matter for future revising authors.
Cover image: diverse seashells on a sandy beach. Photo by Blair Damson on Pexels.
References
- 1
- 2WoRMS — *Harpa cossignanii*
marinespecies.org
- 3WoRMS — *Harpa davidmonsecouri*
marinespecies.org
- 4WoRMS — *Architectonica houarti*
marinespecies.org
- 5WoRMS — *Architectonica philippeboucheti*
marinespecies.org
- 6WoRMS — *Architectonica backeljaui*
marinespecies.org
- 7
- 8WoRMS — *Cymbium cymbium monnieri*
marinespecies.org
- 9WoRMS — *Roseomitra meli*
marinespecies.org
- 10WoRMS — *Chicoreus solae*
marinespecies.org
- 11WoRMS — *Leporicypraea mappa vezzaroi*
marinespecies.org
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