Annotated and updated checklist of land and freshwater molluscs from Asturias (Northern Spain) with emphasis on parasite transmitters and exotic species

Abstract

Land and freshwater molluscs are the most abundant non-arthropod invertebrates from inland habitats worldwide, playing important ecological roles and some being important pests in agriculture. However, despite their ecological, and even economic and sanitary importance, their local diversity in many European regions is not perfectly understood, with a particularly notableknowledge gap in the northern Iberian malacofauna. This work aims at providing a revised checklist of continental gastropods and bivalves from the Asturias (northern Spain), based on the examination of newly collected and deposited material and on the critical analysis of published and gray literature. A total of 165 molluscan species are recognized. Ten species constitute new records from Asturias and seven from northern Iberian Peninsula. Seventeen species are introduced or invasive, evidencing the current increase of the bioinvasion rate in continental molluscs. Furthermore, all these exotic species are parasite transmitters or trematode intermediate hosts, and thus represent a potential bio-sanitary risk for human and other animal health. The provided data strongly suggest that the increase of invasive freshwater snail species can lead to an increase in parasitic infections, and this is a crucial point that transcends the merely scientific to the political-social sphere.