Sinployea australis

Family	Charopidae
Authority	Climo, Mahlfeld & Roscoe, 2025
Threat status	Proposed in 2025, see Conservation below
Shell	Shell small, thin, and fragile, 2 mm wide and 1.09 mm high at approximately three whorls, moderately finely ribbed, loosely coiled, narrowly umbilicate, and low spired.

Distribution

South Island, Southland, Invercargill.

Habitat

Temperate floodplain podocarp forest?

The name

From Latin australis, southern, in reference to the southern distribution of the species.

Conservation

Sinployea australis might have become extinct since it was last collected in the 1980s in Thomsons Bush, Invercargill. Repeated sampling in bush reserves in and around Invercargill has failed to rediscover this species. Collections have been made in Thomsons Bush and other localities nearby by F.J. Brook (2013), K.M. (September 2016 and November 2020), and N. Peterson (November 2020 and February 2021) without re-collecting S. australis. More than 50 samples have been taken from the area in the last decade and have failed to detect this species. We therefore propose that the species be presumed extinct. Figure 2 shows the numbers of Southland collection events that have been made, and none of these detected S. australis. It is possible that major weather events, hydrological habitat changes, and weed spraying in the intervening decades might have destroyed snail colonies.

Sources

• Described in: Mahlfeld, K., Climo, F. & Roscoe, D. (2025). Systematics, conservation status, and biogeography of 16 new species of Sinployea Solem, 1983 (Gastropoda: Charopidae) from New Zealand. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 204(1). Publication details
• Treatment on Plazi (CC0). Distribution, habitat, name and conservation text are quoted from it.

This record was compiled from published, public data. A full factsheet for this species has not been written yet.