Mission to keep the “most beautiful in the world” snail

Researchers have launched a mission to save what some consider the most beautiful snails in the world, as well as unlock their biological secrets.

The disappearing snails of the tree of the polymite, which disappear from the native forest habitats in the east of Cuba, have bright, colorful and extravagant patterns.

Unfortunately, these shells are desirable for collectors, and experts on the protection that the shell trade is pushing the snails to disappear.

Biologists in Cuba and experts at the University of Notingham in the UK have now united in order to preserve six well -known species of Polymita.

The most endangered of them is Sulphurosa Polymita, which is a linden green color with blue flame patterns around its coils and bright -charging and yellow stripes across the shell.

But all kinds of polymita are amazingly bright and colorful, which in itself is an evolutionary secret.

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

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

“Their beauty attracts people who collect and trade shells. Thus, what makes them different and interesting to me as a scientist is unfortunately deepening them.”

Seeking on the Internet with Davison’s professions, we found several platforms where sellers based in the UK offered Shell Polymita for sale. On one site, a collection of seven shells was advertised for 160 pounds.

“For some of these species, we know that they really disappear. So, it doesn’t take much (if) collecting them in Cuba and trades them to extinct.”

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

Although there are international rules for the Polymita snails, it is difficult to observe. In accordance with the Convention on International Trade Excellent Species – remove snails or their shells from Cuba without permission. But it is legally selling shells elsewhere.

Professor Davison says that with pressure, as climate change and the loss of forest, affecting their natural habitat in Cuba, “you can easily imagine where people who collect shells have transferred the population to the local disappearance.”

To try to prevent this, Professor Davison cooperates closely with Professor Bernard Reez-Tour at the University of De Oryiente, Santiago de Cuba, who is a biologist.

The purpose of this international project is to better understand how the snails have developed, and to provide information that will help preservation.

Part of prof. The Ree-Tour is perhaps the most difficult: working with unreliable nutrition and in hot climates, he brought Polymita Swils to his own captive house.

“They have not been bred yet, but they are all right,” he told us in a video.

“But it’s difficult – we always have a blackout.”

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

Here, Professor Davison and his team can keep tiny snails fabrics in cryogenic freezers to keep them. They can use this material to read the animal genome – a biological set of encoded instructions that make every snail as it is.

The team seeks to use this information to confirm how many species they are connected and what part of their genetic code gives them their unusual, unique color patterns.

Hope they can reveal these biological secrets before these colorful creatures will be redeemed and sold.

“Eastern Cuba is the only place in the world where these snails are found,” said Professor Davison BBC News.

“It is here that there is experience – where people who know these snails, love them and understand, live and work.

“We hope we can use genetic information we can bring to contribute to their preservation.”