We are delighted that our Partula snails are part of this fantastic initiative (phoenixspeciesproject.org/species/poly...) 🐌🌏

Phoenix Species Project@phoenixspecies.bsky.social · 4w ago

🌍 Meet the Phoenix Species Project, a new global effort to help recover 100 of the world's most threatened species. Launched by @bezosearthfund.org & @rewildorg.bsky.social, support from Leonardo Dicaprio, Age of Union & the Todd Graves Family Foundation. Follow along: phoenixspeciesproject.org

A visit to @zslofficial.bsky.social to discuss Partula snail Green Listing and conservation priorities with some time to look around. The colobus monkeys in the Snowdon Aviary were keeping dry indoors but the ring-tails were more obliging

My latest paper just published 🐌🌏

@jconch.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"Two new species of Tropidophora (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Pomatiidae) and new records of land snails from the Aldabra group, Seychelles" has been published in #JournalofConchology #jconch #conchsoc #mollusca #gastropoda #newspecies

We've reached a bright point in this turbulent year: Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday. A wonderful inspiration. Very many years ago I had a tortoise conservation project for which he agreed to be patron. Here we are at its launch, both somewhat younger!

This year's issue of Tentacle now out with lots of interesting mollusc conservation news, including our report on Partula conservation in 2025 (and one of our released Partula suturalis on the cover) www.hawaii.edu/cowielab/Ten... 🐌🌏

The 'Uproar Conservation Challenge' allocates funding for selected species. Its live for voting - do make sure you vote for the Partula tohiveana snail! www.indianapoliszoo.com/uproar-conse...

Uproar Conservation Challenge

Help vote to save endangered species with the Uproar Conservation Challenge. Each round a species moves on to compete for the big prize!

indianapoliszoo.com

As the end of the teaching term comes into sight thoughts start turning to research. Here I've got the extraordinarily small tags for radio-tracking Partula snails later in the year 🐌

New York Times article on our successful re-establishment of Partula tohiveana. 'Darwin's finches of the snail world' is a good description www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/s... 🌏🐌

Slowly, Slowly, ‘Darwin’s Finches of the Snail World’ Return From Near Extinction

nytimes.com

That was rather a long day! A full day's teaching and then in the evening an online login for the launch in Tahiti of our new book on the history of Partula shell cultural artefacts. It's been a very interesting project delving into a different aspect of these endangered species. 🌏🐌

A great Peterhouse Biology Symposium yesterday: excellent talks and such interesting topics. Thanks to all participants (and attendees). list of talks below...

🐌Justin Gerlach's blog post traces the remarkable journey of Partula conservation from the near‑total collapse of wild populations in the 1970s, following the introduction of the predatory rosy wolf snail, to successful reintroduction efforts.

Intriguing that there may be hidden diversity in the invasive terrestrial ribbon worm Geonemertes pelaensis, also good to see some dietary data. It is an active predator of tiny snails, records of arthropods could be carrion feeding

Jean-Lou Justine@jean-lou-justine.bsky.social · 7mo ago

This is not a land flatworm... it's a land nemertean! In this new paper, we describe its complex mitogenome, report the presence of NUMTs, and even more! 🧪 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Just published: our paper on 'Re-establishment of Partula tohiveana tree snails in French Polynesia after 40 years of extinction in the wild'. Great results from 2024 that we built on last year, high hopes for other species this year. Oryx - bit.ly/4sCbk6O

Geonemertes pelaensis, one of few terrestrial ribbon worms. Maybe s-e Asian originally; spreading from early 1900s, but only relatively recently becoming pretty much pantropical (on islands at least). I've always been interested in the odd little predators & decades ago wrote a paper on keeping them

Jean-Lou Justine@jean-lou-justine.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Coming soon: the complete mitogenome and additional molecular insights into this fascinating animal. And no—it’s not a flatworm. Stay tuned! 🧪

Now that our undergraduate teaching term is over and I've finished interviewing for next year's intake, I've been able to get back to identifying the invertebrates collected in the colleges biodiversity surveys earlier in the year. I'd forgotten how much material there was still to identify!

Good to see an interesting species record published from @peterhousecam.bsky.social gardens

James McCulloch@jamesimcc.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Finding a colony of Hypogastrura springtails on this wall in Peterhouse, Cambridge started me on a trail through old papers, concluding that there may be another - morphologically distinguishable! - species in Britain. The story is in the latest issue of BJENH: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

I've been too busy teaching to look at this in detail, but I did recently get the first results from the samples collected @peterhousecam.bsky.social as our contribution to BIOSCAN insect monitoring. That's helped push the number of animal species recorded in the gardens to almost 1000

My latest paper has just been published in PeerJ; working on this one was a really fun puzzle to solve. We identify an extinct predator on Mauritius from the holes it left in shells of its prey. Mauritian snail shells show evidence of extinct predators peerj.com/articles/201... @peerj.bsky.social

As we approach the beginning of the new academic year this year's @peterhousecam.bsky.social Biology Newsletter is now out islandbiodiversity.com/petnewslette...

Partula reintroduction comes to an end for 2025 with a final monitoring in lovely Papehue valley on Tahiti. Nothing startling today but lots of newborn snails is encouraging. I really hope we can show success with Partula nodosa next year. 🌏🐌

Final monitoring on Moorea, and what a day. A good start in the reserve at Fare Natura. Then we found wild-born adult Partula taeniata simulans. I was confident we could do that, so a pleasing find, but... 🌏🐌

Last field survey on Tahiti today: the southern point of Te Pari. Nothing unusual but good populations of Partula hyalina marmorata. The sort of patchy metapopulations we found are probably natural for this species (one of few partulids not to be Critically Endangered or Extinct) 🌏🐌

Today was a search for high altitude snails on Mt Aorai. Finding snails in this environment isn't easy. We did find some Critically endangered Samoana diaphana. The shell is extremely thin and translucent (hence 'diaphana'), the distinctive pattern is on the body inside the shell 🌏🐌

Some encouraging signs for Partula nodosa and affinis today; many released animals found again and many births. We also scouted out possible additional release sites for next year.

Partula are always unexpected. Today we visited a relict population of Partula hyalina and Samoana attenuata. What we didn't expect was to find hyalina eating another snail species. There was a carnivorous Partula in the past, but we've never document predation by hyalina before.

Today was monitoring day on Huahine island and the last day for most of the team. What a day for a big find! Great results from the releases, but even better was finding this tiny one- the first wild-born Partula on Huahine for 31 years. Another great vindication of everyone's hard work 🌏🐌

Today was the last Partula snail reintroduction of the year: Huahine island with more varia and the first rosea to be released since 2019

2nd day of monitoring on Moorea; still great progress with good dispersal and very little mortality despite us finding several of the predatory Euglandina. They may be invasive monsters but I still have a soft spot for their elegance (a picture of one instead of Partula for once)

First day of monitoring the released snails on Moorea. Exceptionally good results, for most species there was no mortality at all despite a night of unbelievably heavy rain - not what the zoo snails are used to at all. The snails in the reserve look fantastic

Yesterday was a busy day for Partula conservation. As well as a full day of releases of snails back into the forest on Moorea we had the opening and stocking of the new reserve at Fare Natura. Fantastic to see that go from my wild idea exactly two years ago to this