This is a guide to the land snails and slugs of Indiana. It is designed to serve as an educational resource for the casual or serious observer (from iNaturalist, for example) to know the nature of snails and identify the species or genus of the most likely encountered shells.
For completeness, a broader list of snails and their identification and description is also presented - but based only on the information at hand. For a true consideration of Indiana snails, hundreds of more collections and thousands more snails would need to be collected and processed and museum collections would need to be evaluated - a set of tasks beyond the scope of this effort.
These are the major features of this Guide:
1. About Land Snails - a brief introduction to the biology of land snails.
2. A Quick Land Snail Guide - a brief description of a few land snails that you might most commonly encounter on a hike or walk in a state park, forest, or other woodland area with the information needed to identify them if not to species, at last to type. It does not include slugs.
3. A deeper look at Land Snails and Slugs, including:
an explanation of snail structure, the anatomy of land snails and shells needed for identification
an identification key to the major groups of Indiana land snails and, when possible, to an individual species. While you will end up with individual species in many cases, it will not always possible to identify a specimen to species - but only to type or kind of snail (usually the genus). This key is more complex than the information in the Quick Land Snail Guide.
a list of species - a list of land snail species or groups likely to be found in Indiana with descriptions, images (or links to images) and state and USA distribution maps.
a section on non-native Indiana species
4 . About Aquatic Snails - a brief intro, comments on structure, and a key to major groups with a species list.
5. Resources - includes "how to photograph snails for identification" and resources for land snails and slugs, as well as aquatic snails.