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Science correspondent, BBC News
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Researchers have embarked on a mission to save what some consider to be the world’s most beautiful snails, and also unlock their biological secrets.
Endangered Polymita tree snails, which are disappearing from their native forest habitats in Eastern Cuba, have vibrant, colourful and extravagantly patterned shells.
Unfortunately, those shells are desirable for collectors, and conservation experts say the shell trade is pushing the snails towards extinction.
Biologists in Cuba, and specialists at the University of Nottingham in the UK, have now teamed up with the goal of saving the six known species of Polymita.
The most endangered of those is Polymita sulphurosa, which is lime green with blue flame patterns around its coils and bright orange and yellow bands across its shell.
But all the Polymita species are strikingly bright and colourful, which is an evolutionary mystery in itself.
“One of the reasons I’m interested in these snails is because they’re so beautiful,” explained evolutionary geneticist and mollusc expert Prof Angus Davison from the University of Nottingham.
The irony, he said, is that this is the reason the snails are so threatened.
“Their beauty attracts people who collect and trade shells. So the very thing that makes them different and interesting to me as a scientist is, unfortunately, what’s endangering them as well.”
Searching online with Prof Davison, we found several platforms where sellers, based in the UK, were offering Polymita shells for sale.
