At the beginning of the 21st century it was realised by Hartmut Nordsieck and Theo Ripken that populations of Balea from Portugal were of two morphologial types.

[6] However, in 2010 von Proschwitz[5] argued that a species described in 1847 from Norway, Balea sarsii, was the same as B. heydeni and that the former name should be used because it is the older.

[2] Subsequently, Bank[7] argued that the original B. sarsii could just as easily have been B. perversa, which is much commoner in Norway.

The dispute is unresolved: for instance Welter-Schultes' identification guide[8] uses B. sarsii, but MolluscaBase[9] prefers B. heydeni, as does the 2020 British List.

The name heydeni commemorates the German naturalist Lucas Friedrich Julius Dominikus von Heyden.

[5] The type locality of B. sarsii has been inferred to be Florø in Sogn og Fjordane County, the former home of M. Sars, who provided the specimens used in the species description.

The shell surface sculpture has wrinkled coarse growth lines rather than the finer and more regular riblets in B. perversa.

They eat lichens, a consequence of which is that air pollution seems to have caused a range reduction in Britain.