Currently a mission to save the most beautiful snails in the world

Researchers have undertaken a mission to save what some consider to be the most beautiful snails in the world and also unlock their biological secrets.

The threatened snails of the tree polymit, which disappear from their native forest habitats in Eastern Cuba, have lively, colorful and extravagantly colorful shells.

Unfortunately, these shells are desirable for collectors, and conservation experts say that trading with shells pushes the snails to disappear.

Biologists in Cuba and specialists at the University of Nottingham in the UK are now partnering with the goal of saving the six famous species Polymita.

The most injured of these is Polymita Sulphurosa, which is green with lime with blue flame patterns around its windings and bright orange and yellow strips through their shell.

But all types of Polymita are strikingly bright and colorful, which is an evolutionary mystery in itself.

“One of the reasons I am interested in these snails is that they are so beautiful,” explained the evolutionary geneticist and mollusc expert Prof. Angus Davison of the University of Nottingham.

The irony, he said, is that this is why the snails are so threatened.

“Their beauty attracts people who collect and trade with shells. So the very thing that makes them different and interesting to me as a scientist is, unfortunately, what threatens them.”

Looking online with Prof. Davison, we found several platforms where sellers based in the UK offered Polymita shells for sale. One site advertises a collection of seven shells for £ 160.

“For some of these species, we know that they are really quite threatened. So it won’t be necessary (if) someone collects them in Cuba and trades them to make some species disappear.”

The shells are bought and sold as decorative items, but every empty sheath was once a living animal.

Although there are international rules for the protection of Polymita snails, they are difficult to apply. Illegal – according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered species – to remove the snails or their shells from Cuba without permission. But it is legal to sell the shells elsewhere.

Prof. Davison says that with pressure as a climate change and loss of forests affecting their natural habitat in Cuba, “you can easily imagine where people who collect shells would direct the population to local disappearance.”

To try to prevent this, Prof.

The purpose of this international project is to better understand how snails are developing and to provide information that will help protect.

Prof. Reyes-Tour’s part of the venture is probably the most challenging: working with unreliable power supplies and in a hot climate he put Polymita snails in his own captivity home.

“They haven’t grown yet, but they are doing well,” he told us a video call.

“However, it is challenging – we have eclipses all the time.”

Meanwhile, genetic studies are being conducted in well -equipped laboratories at the University of Nottingham.

Here, Prof. Davison and his team can retain small samples of snail tissue in cryogenic freezers to preserve them. They are able to use this material to read the animal genome – the biological set of encoded instructions that make every snail as it is.

The team aims to use this information to confirm how many species are, how they are connected to each other, and how much of their genetic code gives them their exceptional, unique color models.

The hope is that they can reveal these biological secrets before these colorful creatures are purchased and sold in extinction.

“Eastern Cuba is the only place in the world where these snails are located,” Prof. Davison told BBC News.

“This is where the expertise is – where people who know these snails love and understand them live and work.

“We hope that we can use the genetic information we can contribute to contribute to their conservation.”