Mission in progress to save the most beautiful snails in the world in the world

The researchers embarked on a mission to save what some consider the most beautiful snails in the world, and also unlock their biological secrets.

Polymita snails disappearing, which disappear from their native forest habitats in the east of Cuba, have vibrant, colorful and extravagant shells.

Unfortunately, these shells are desirable for collectors, and conservation experts say that the bus trade pushes snails towards extinction.

Cuba biologists, and specialists from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, have now joined forces to save the six known Polymita species.

The most threatened of these is Polymita Sulphurosa, which is lemon green with blue flame patterns around its coils and orange and bright yellow bands through its shell.

But all the species of polymita are surprisingly shiny and colorful, which is an evolving mystery in itself.

“One of the reasons why I am interested in these snails is that they are so beautiful,” said the scalable geneticist and expert in the Angus Davison molluscs of the University of Nottingham.

Irony, he said, is that that’s why snails are so threatened.

“Their beauty attracts people who collect and exchange shells. So the very thing that makes them different and interesting as a scientist is, unfortunately, which also endangers them.”

By looking online with Professor Davison, we found several platforms where the sellers, based in the United Kingdom, offered Polymita shells for sale. On a site, a collection of seven shells was announced for £ 160.

“For some of these species, we know that they are really in the process of disappearance. So we shouldn’t have much (if) someone collects them in Cuba and exchange, to make certain species disappear.”

The shells are purchased and sold as decorative objects, but each empty shell was once a living animal.

Although there are international rules to protect polymita snails, they are difficult to apply. It is illegal – under the Convention on International Trade in endangered species – to take the snails or their cuba shells without a license. But it is legal to sell the shells elsewhere.

Professor Davison says that with pressures such as climate change and the loss of forest affecting their natural habitat in Cuba, “you can easily imagine where people who collect shells would tip a population in local extinction”.

To try to prevent this, Professor Davison works in close collaboration with Professor Bernardo Reyes-Tur at the Universidad of Orient, Santiago de Cuba, who is a biologist of conservation.

The objective of this international project is to better understand how snails have evolved and to provide information that will help conservation.

The part of Professor Reyes-Tur of Endeavor is perhaps the most difficult: working with unreliable supplies and in a warm climate, he brought Polymaire snails in his own house for captive farming.

“They have not yet raised, but they are doing well,” he told us during a video call.

“It’s difficult, however – we have breakdowns all the time.”

Meanwhile, in well -equipped laboratories from the University of Nottingham, genetic research is underway.

Here, Professor Davison and his team can keep tiny samples of snails fabric in cryogenic freezes to preserve them. They are able to use this material to read the genome of animals – the biological whole of coded instructions which make each snail what it is.

The team aims to use this information to confirm the number of species, how they are linked to each other and which part of their genetic code gives them their extraordinary and unique color models.

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 found,” Professor Davison told BBC News.

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

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