Lamarck was Right
The Lymnaaeidae family of freshwater snails are right-handed pond snails. Common in the water hole near you. Early workers on freshwater snails distinguished three genera within the Lymnaeidae family: Lymnaea , described by Lamark in 1799; Galba , described by Schrank in 1803; and Stagnicola , described by Jefferys in 1830. A wee bit later, in 1885, the genus Fossaria was described by Westerlund; this is generally accepted to be a synonym of Galba . Hubendick reined things back a bit, putting them all in the same genus, Lymnaea , in his 1951 work, indicating that the differences were so minor that separate genera were unjustified. Side Note: I’m ignoring more than a few genera, namely Radix , Bulimnea , Plurolinaea , and Acella . I’ll list even more later, so stay tuned. And there it did not stay: Workers on snails have swapped back-and-forth using these genera, or not, over the years. It gets confusing as the first designations were separated primarily by the siz...