Limacus maculatus

Limacus maculatus, the green cellar slug or Irish yellow slug, is a species of slug native to the Caucasus and Black Sea coast.^[2] It has also been introduced to a number of northern European countries. In its introduced range the species is often synanthropic. It is most likely to be confused with Limacus flavus, which it closely resembles externally.

Limacus maculatus
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Gastropoda
Order:	Stylommatophora
Family:	Limacidae
Genus:	Limacus
Species:	L. maculatus
Binomial name
Limacus maculatus (Kaleniczenko, 1851)
Synonyms
Krynickillus maculatus Kaleniczenko, 1851 Limax ecarinatus O. Boettger, 1881 Limax grossui Lupu, 1970 Limax maculatus (Kaleniczenko, 1851) Limax pseudoflavus Evans, 1978[1]

Limax ecarinatus Boettger, 1881 is the appropriate name if Limacus is considered a subgenus of Limax.^[3] The reason is that Nunneley already described a Limax maculatus in 1837; this turned out to be a synonym of Limax maximus, but nevertheless the combination Limax maculatus cannot be re-applied to a species described under the name maculatus at a later date (even though that 1851 description used a different genus, Krynickillus).

Plate accompanying the description of Limax ecarinatus^[4]

Distribution

This species is believed to be native in parts of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Turkey, southwestern Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.^[2][5] It has now spread to:

• Great Britain^[6]
• Ireland^[6]
• Greece^[5]
• Canary Islands^[5]
• Germany^[5]
• Netherlands^[7]
• Czech Republic^[8]

• Hungary^[9]

• Belarus^[10]
• Kyiv in Ukraine^[11]
• Saint Petersburg and Astrakhan in Russia^[12]