Features of shell and genitalia as well as nucleotide sequences of selected mitochondrial and nuclear genes of specimens of Monacha cantiana from ten northern French and two Dutch populations were compared with the same features of British and Italian populations. They were found to be very similar to populations previously identified as belonging to the CAN-1 lineage of M. cantiana. This confirms previous suggestions that M. cantiana was introduced to western Europe (England, France and the Netherlands) in historical times.

Ecologists increasingly appreciate the central role that urban biodiversity plays in ecosystems, however much urban biodiversity is neglected, especially some very diverse groups of invertebrates. For the first time in southern Europe, land snail communities are analysed in four urban habitats along a geographical gradient of three cities, using quantitative methods and assessing the relative roles of local environmental conditions (“distance from sea”, “distance from city centre”, “vegetation cover”) and spatial effects by principal coordinate analysis of neighbour matrices, redundancy analysis and variation partitioning. A total of 53 species was recorded, a richness similar to that of natural areas. At habitat level, species richness did not show a clear increasing trend from more to less urbanized habitats, but rather a homogeneous pattern. At city level, study areas hosted rather heterogeneous species assemblages and biotic homogenization did not seem to have any impact; indeed, only three species could be considered alien. Variation partitioning showed that land snail communities were mostly structured by environmental factors, even when spatial structures independent of measured environmental variables were included: “vegetation cover” and “distance from city centre” were the environmental variables that explained most of the variation in species composition. The lack of strong spatial structure also unexpectedly suggested that transport by humans aids dispersal of organisms with low mobility, which are usually limited by spatial constraints in natural environments. These results provide ecological and conservation implications for other invertebrate groups, suggesting to set priorities in management strategies that include habitat conservation at local scale.

The Greek island of Corfu (Kérkyra) is considered the type locality of two Monacha species described in 1834 by Rossmässler, namely Monacha claustralis and M. parumcincta. In this work, Corfu populations of these species were investigated by an integrative approach including analysis of morphological features of shell and distal genitalia as well as molecular features of selected mitochondrial and nuclear gene fragments to establish the relationships between Corfu M. claustralis and M. cartusiana as well as between Corfu and Italian M. parumcincta. Shell features did not differentiate the pairs analysed, i.e. Monacha claustralis vs M. cartusiana and Corfu vs Italian M. parumcincta, whereas features of distal genitalia structure and nucleotide sequences of mitochondrial genes (COI and 16SrDNA) distinguished them significantly. Nuclear gene sequences (ITS2 flanked with 5.8S and 28SrDNA fragments) also differentiated between Corfu and Italian M. parumcincta. It is therefore postulated that these two pairs are composed of four separate species: M. claustralis, M. cartusiana, Corfu M. parumcincta, and Italian M. parumcincta, which are distinct from each other and from the other species of the genus Monacha used here for comparison (the six lineages of M. cantiana s.l. and M. pantanellii).