Arboreal land snail genus Leptopoma has extraordinary high distribution in Sabah,
Malaysia. Despite their wide distribution, taxonomy of genus Leptopoma still largely
depended on traditional morphological classification. The reliability of morphology-based
classification is controversial because snail's morphology is highly influence by
environmental factors due to land snail's low mobility. As a contribution solving these
problem, I reconstructed the phylogeny of genus Leptopoma using molecular approach.
Two mitochondrial genes (COI and 16S) were obtained from Leptopoma specimens and
the phylogenetic trees were revealed by performing maximum likelihood and bayesian
inference analysis. Besides, shell morphometric also investigated and mapped onto
phylogenetic trees to test phylogenetic signal. All the DNA sequences and specimens
details were established to Barcoding of Life Data Systems (BOLD), at the same time
barcode gap within Leptopoma also investigated. A total of 17 Leptopoma specimens,
which representing three nominal species and one related-outgroup species were
included in this study. All phylogenetic trees strongly supported the monophyly of L.
sericatum and L. perlucidum from Sabah. This results congruent with their morphological
classification. Among the nine shell morphometrics, presence of inner ring in aperture
exhibited significant phylogenetic signal. This suggested that presence of inner ring can
be the reliable diagnostic character in delimitating Leptopoma species. Based on Kimura-
2-parameter distance model, barcode gap is present within genus where intra-specific
distance is below 10% while inter-specific distance is above 10%. In overall, this study
has contributed 38% of all the Leptopoma records in BOLD which enable others to
access and make use of in other related research. Further study which include more
specimens from every distribution range in Sabah is needed to elucidate a
comprehensive taxonomic status of Leptopom
