A project undertaken at the Australian Museum, and supervised by Frank Koehler
This project explored the diversity of land snails on Pacific islands — small, often-overlooked animals that play an important role in ecosystems and are among the most threatened groups of species on Earth. Many Pacific land snails are found nowhere else in the world, and their survival is closely tied to the health of island forests. Over three years, our team carried out fieldwork in the Cook Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Solomon Islands (Malaita and Tetepare), and Fiji. We worked hand-in-hand with local conservation groups, traditional landowners, and government agencies to survey native snail species, understand their habitats, and support local efforts to protect them. In every country, we were guided by our commitment to community engagement and to supporting grassroots conservation. Our partners included the Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust, US Fish and Wildlife Service, American Samoa Community College, Baru Conservation Alliance (Malaita), Tetepare Descendants Association (Tetepare), and Nature Fiji. Our fieldwork uncovered several new snail species previously unknown to science — some of them living only on mountain tops, where they are particularly vulnerable to climate change and habitat loss. We collected and carefully identified specimens, and extracted DNA from many samples to study their genetic diversity and evolutionary relationships. In total, we generated new DNA data for almost 100 snail samples using advanced sequencing techniques. One of our achievements is the creation of an exon capture bait set for Helicarionidae that allows researchers to study the DNA of these land snails in much more detail than before. This tool will benefit future research across the region. We also helped build local capacity. In Fiji, we supported the Department of Forestry to begin a reference collection of land snails for future biodiversity monitoring. We gave talks in local villages to share our findings and raise awareness about the importance of native snails. Although we had to adjust some of our fieldwork plans due to COVID-19 and natural disasters, we successfully met our core project goals. Our research has already informed conservation work on some islands, and we will continue to support better protection of Pacific land snail species in the years to come. The specimens and the data associated with them will support our on-going taxonomic research, which aims to enhance the scientific documentation of the land snail faunas of our study areas, including the description of new species.
Phylogenetic reconstructions will be useful to reconstruct the pathways by which different groups of land snails have managed to colonize islands fostering our understanding of the biogeography of the region.