Recent sampling efforts in northern Algeria and the investigation of some collection material has revealed the presence of taxa with conchological and genital morphological similarities to the Candidula-like group. A detailed investigation of the anatomy of the genitalia combined with the analysis of two mitochondrial and two nuclear markers of representatives of the known genera as well as two Algerian taxa has been conducted. The result confirms the affiliation of the latter in the Candidula-like complex. Comparative anatomical analysis led to the description of a new genus, Kherattolactea gen. nov., endemic to northern Algeria with Xerophila keratae, Kobelt, 1892 as the type species. The anatomical distinction corroborates the result of the molecular analysis that reveals apomorphic nucleotide substitution. Moreover, the result of the combined analysis provides the first confirmed record of the genus Orexana Chueca, Gómez-Moliner, Madeira & Pfenninger, 2018, in north Africa, represented by the species Orexana lemoinei Kobelt, 1882 nov. comb. A new Xerogyra species, Xerogyra halgassi nov. sp., from the Apennine Mountain has been described based on the combination of morphoanatomical and molecular traits. For the first time, the morphoanatomical description of the known Xerogyra species has been presented.
Ezzine et al. (Sat,) studied this question.