Sinployea hikurangi
Sinployea hikurangi was named in 2025 by Frank Climo, Karin Mahlfeld and David Roscoe, in their revision of the genus Sinployea. It belongs to the Charopidae: mostly tiny, finely ribbed snails of forest litter, and the largest family of New Zealand land snails.
| Family | Charopidae |
| Authority | Climo, Mahlfeld & Roscoe, 2025 |
| Threat status | Proposed in 2025, see Conservation below |
| Shell | Shell small, thin, and fragile, 2.3 mm wide and 1.24 mm high at 3.4 whorls, coarsely ribbed, loosely coiled, narrowly umbilicate. |
Distribution
New Zealand, North Island: Eastern Coromandel Peninsula, eastern Bay of Plenty, East Coast and northern Hawke’sBay.
Habitat
Subtropical coastal to montane broadleaf forest.
The name
Named after Mount Hikurangi, Raukumara Range, East Cape.
Conservation
Sinployea hikurangi is known from Tairua, Coromandel, and the Raukumara and Ngamoko Ranges. The East Coast ranges have not been widely collected because of the steep terrain and difficult access. However, considering the mostly allopatric distributions of the other Sinployea species, it is likely that S. hikurangi is a Coromandel Peninsula-East Coast endemic. The 2010 NZTCS assessment ranked this species as ‘At Risk: Naturally Uncommon’, with the qualifiers ‘Data Poor’ and ‘Biologically Sparse’. No change is required except for modifying the qualifiers to ‘Data Poor: Size and Trend’.
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.