Many taxa are often identified using molecular techniques rather than morphology. Phylogenetics are leaning more towards DNA taxonomy rather than morphology based taxonomy.
William, 2011 investigated the effects of environment, geography, tectonics and sea level on the patterns of speciation of Lunella (Turbo undulatus was included in their study as some molecular studies showed that they belong to the genus Lunella).
The genus is only found in the Indo-west Pacific along continental coastlines and island arcs.
A shallow-sea habitat can be affected by tectonic events and sea level changes. Island s subside, coastlines change and continents move overtime. This factors causes the creation and loss of shallow-water habitats (Valentine and Jablonski, 1982). These changes to geography affects climate and environment, temperature, trophic resources and salinity. Organisms may react to this by evolving in response to local selection pressure (Valentine and Jablonski, 1982).
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