Haimei  Wang¹ , Zhen  Liu²

1 Hainan Institute of Biotechnology, Haikou, 570206, Hainan, China
2 Institute of Life Sciences, Jiyang College of Zhejiang A&F University, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
Biological Evidence, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 3   
Received: 20 Mar., 2025    Accepted: 26 Apr., 2025    Published: 07 May, 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The African land snail is a good example of how environmental diversity and evolutionary processes affect biodiversity. In this review, we summarize recent research on the phylogenetic genome and morphology, primarily to explore how different snail lineages undergo adaptive radiation and convergent evolution. We analyzed genomic data and shell morphology data together to understand how the complex terrain, climate change, and various habitats in Africa drive rapid evolutionary differentiation of these snails in mountainous forests, savannas, isolated hills, and other environments. These places have different ecological conditions, which have given snails many opportunities for evolution. We also specifically mentioned some examples of morphological convergence. In these examples, although snail lineages are different, they will evolve very similar shell types and ecological characteristics when facing similar environmental pressures. That is to say, they have made similar adaptive responses in their respective environments. Among them, we also specifically analyzed the evolutionary process of the Tropidophora group. This example demonstrates how the diversity of phylogenetic genomic data and shell shape changes interact with each other, especially in different ecological environments where the changes are most pronounced. These studies indicate that in order to truly understand the evolutionary history of these snails, we must combine molecular (genetic) and morphological (morphological) methods. We also hope that this review can provide a framework and methodology for future research. At the same time, we would like to emphasize that when protecting the rapidly disappearing snail habitats in Africa, we cannot only focus on ecology, but also consider their unique evolutionary history behind them.

Adaptive radiation; Convergent evolution; Phylogenomics; Terrestrial snails; Morphological evolution