The genus Omalonyx d'Orbigny, 1837, includes neotropical semi‐aquatic succineid slugs and comprises six recognized species to date. Field surveys across continental South America recovered five of the six recognized species. According to the morphological characters traditionally included in Omalonyx descriptions, the specimens were tentatively identified as O. matheroni, O. pattersonae, O. convexus, O. geayi and O. unguis. Employing sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) alone or combined with the nuclear second internal transcribed spacer (ITS2) in discovery methods of species delimitation (GMYC and STACEY) led to species delimitation hypotheses that, except for unambiguously supporting O. convexus, have no correspondence to morphologically based assignments. To choose the delimitation model that best fit our data, the hypotheses recovered by GMYC, STACEY and morphology and created by merging species recovered by those methods had their marginal likelihood estimated and compared using the Bayes factors. The best‐supported hypothesis distinguished two species besides O. convexus: one widespread over most of South America and the other restricted to Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. Furthermore, the pattern of genetic structuring supports pathways connecting the Amazonian and Atlantic forests. This pattern is similar to that observed in terrestrial taxa (e.g., forest‐dwelling small mammals) and is different from the pattern for fully aquatic taxa.

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Despite the epidemiological importance of the Lymnaeidae family regarding transmission of Fasciola hepatica, knowledge about the diversity and distribution of these molluscs and the role of each species in the expansion of fasciolosis remains sparse. Classical morphological (n=10) identification was performed in lymneids from Lagoa Santa, a municipality in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, along with molecular and phylogenetic analysis (n=05) based on the partial nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (COI mtDNA) and ribosomal internal transcribed spacer II (ITS-2 rDNA). The shell morphology made it possible to distinguish the lymneids of Lagoa Santa from Pseudosuccinea columella. Differences found in the penile complex and prostate shape allowed this species to be distinguished from Galba truncatula. However, the homogeneity of reproductive tract characteristics among Lymnaea (Galba) cubensis, L. viator and L. neotropica confirmed that these characteristics show low taxonomic reliability for identifying cryptic species. Genetic divergence analysis for the COI mtDNA gene and ITS-2 region of rDNA revealed greater similarity to Lymnaea (Galba) cubensis. Thus, correct species differentiation is important for monitoring the epidemiological risk of fasciolosis in the state of Minas Gerais, where cases of the disease have increased over recent years.