The Klamath Banana Slug

October 28, 2026.

I didn't wake up thinking about this marvelous beast, an undescribed Ariolimacid (aka banana slug).

/tangent I had intended to continue assembling my desert snail sequence database. I had panicked while working on my Carefree talussnail (Sonorella carefreeensis sp nov.) species description paper yesterday when I realized the phylogram wasn't what I thought was needed, and that I needed more sequences for neighboring species, and I didn't think I had them. All those specimens are with Jann Vendeeti at LACM and I didn't want to impose, but I worked up a bit of courage and called.  Jann graciously has taken it upon herself to sequence my specimens from Central Arizona, and this in a word is a godsend.  After briefly chatting, I went back to my notes.

I had snippets of snippets hither and yon in email, excel spreadsheets, in various sequence formatted files.... fasta, fas, phy, nex, mega... and found that I had a folder with files from Kat and Vanessa from 11 years prior of sequences I had not previously worked through...

And then I found my access database where I had been organizing the sequences, and there they were.  That then reminded me of something else, namely the WM04 talussnail species that was incompletely sequenced... then a few others... sigh. My desire for sequences seems bottomless.

How did my train of thought get here? Maybe it was wondering about why Barry Roth stuck to his guns about his hypotheses for the Phoenix talussnail, Sonorella allynsmithi. In his view, based upon the characteristics of the base of the verge, this species, which he named Maricopella allynsmithi, was part of the stem group of Sonorella, which he termed Sonorellamorpha, in his 1996 Helminthoglyptidae phylogeny paper (see Table 3). Other systematists have not followed his naming, nor have I because I am a "reluctant" splitter. He was polite with me, however. We were working on describing a banana slug, what's not to like? [Working with me, I've been told, can feel like "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." Thanks, Hart Welsh.  That reminds me of another story, a tangent for another day which may will wind up in my Unhinged stories.] My perspective, with all due respect for Barry was based on weight of evidence. For the Hennigian approach to be convincing (the key word), it requires the systematist to record traits across numerous structures. Barry was focused on a limited number of traits and primarly from one structure, from which he hypothesized the phylogeny of Helminthoglyptidae. That's a BIG PILL to swallow. The bulk of Barry's work on desert snails came before the time of molular systematics using Mitochondrial and Nuclear DNA.  I think if he were in my shoes, and with the benefit of hindsight, would see that much of the minute details in the absurdly complex reproductive systems of mollusks are more plastic; less reliable for systematic classification. 

All of that stated, however, if I were in his shoes at the time being considerably senior, it would have annoyed me. We fell out of touch for a few years, and during my hiatus, he submitted his own specimen of Phoenix talussnail to Genbank as Maricopella allynsmithi (MT739304.1) for his 2021 paper on central Californian Helminthoglyptids.

It was after thinking about all of that, then thinking about the dearth of Malacological journals that one could simply write "notes", like the Veliger (Barry Roth, again), that I sit upon a great amount of unpublished material, and my searching lead me to an article that I had read casually, but, because Maricopella allynsmithi was on my mind, I re-read, and then I put a couple things together. 

And ruminations for some reason prompted me to somehow arrive at this beast.