Albinaria

These species of snails live on limestone rocks, where they feed on algae and lichen. They are known to be active during the rainy seasons, that is, in Mediterranean lowlands, from November to April. Eggs are laid shortly after the beginning of the wet season. It takes two to three wet seasons for development from a juvenile to a fully grown shell . During the intermittent dry seasons, both young and adult snails, aestivate ("the warm weather equivalent of hibernation"^[4]) on the rocks or in crevices inside the rocks. For aestivation, aggregates are often formed, sometimes reaching sizes of many hundreds of individuals. During the last dry season prior to sexual maturation, the subadult snail (the shell of which is already fully developed, albeit thinner than that of an adult) increases the size of its genital organs. Copulation then takes place during the first weeks of autumn rains. Population densities can sometimes be very high, in spite of heavy predation by beetle larvae of the genus Drilus. These insects attack the snails during their aestivation, perforating the shell and eating the snail inside.^[5]

Distribution of the genus Albinaria includes:

• southern Albania
• Greece
• Cyprus
• western and southern Turkey
• Lebanon

Species in this genus include 111 species:^[6]