Changes in land snail biological diversity on Guam, Mariana Islands

New species of pupillid land snail from Guam.

Mariana Islands land snails have have had to cope with an environment seeing accelerating change thanks to climate change and direct human impacts. I had the opportunity to help out with a  USFWS funded project to undertand people’s impacts in terms of introductions and extinctions on vertebrate biodiversity on Guam in 2003. Sediment samples from controlled excavations are now being processed with the help of volunteers at the Florida Museum of Natural History. After two years of processing, data analysis is at hand and I expect to have presentable results by the end of the year that will include descriptions of some new land snail species from Guam!