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...

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... 🌏🐌

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

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

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

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

On Raiatea today reintroducing Partula navigatoria descended from the last wild snails I collected in 1991. This was supposed to happen back in 2020. We also found an excellent site for Partula hebe next year (hopefully) 🌏🐌

Partula releases today: we are trying a new monitoring technique with Partula nodosa using RFID tags. We also visited Tiapa valley to look for Partula incrassa but without success; that's often the way with Partula field research.

It's back to the Pacific today: to Tahiti for this year's Partula tree snail reintroductions. We hope to build on least year's success. This year we have participation in the field from London Zoo, Disney's Animal Kingdom and Woodland Park Zoo 🌏🐌

The collecting for surveying Cambridge college garden biodiversity is complete; now it's identifying the hundreds of insects etc that we've collected. A slight diversion from that work was this visiting sparrowhawk - our sparrows were less than delighted at its sudden appearance.

Last major sampling of the Cambridge colleges biodiversity survey today: @selwyn1882.bsky.social. A pond teeming with life, and an overlooked find: Hesperomyces harmoniae fungus that lives only on the invasive harlequin ladybird (those are the little yellow tufts on the back of the beetle)

Another day studying biodiversity in Cambridge colleges. A rosy tiger moth at Trinity, woodland @queens.cam.ac.uk and I was hoping for the Cambridge endemic 'Backs goldilocks buttercup' @kingscollege.bsky.social but I can't find out how to identify it, so this photo might be any old buttercup.

Top find of today's biodiversity survey of Cambridge colleges was a wasp spider at Trinity College, also wonderful flowers Clare College despite the dry

Today its been biodiversity assessments in what looks like very interesting long grass habitat in @churchillcol.bsky.social and @trinityhallcamb.bsky.social

Another week, another set of Cambridge colleges to study. Yesterday we surveyed the biodiversity of Murray Edwards and @fitzwilliamcollege.bsky.social. Two more to do today.

And today we sampled habitats in @caiuscollege.bsky.social and @darwincollegecam.bsky.social . A very hot day for hunting insects.

This week my Cambridge colleges' biodiversity project has so far surveyed Wolfson, @corpuscambridge.bsky.social , @robinsoncollege.bsky.social and @newnhamcollege.bsky.social. With yesterday's heat comparing the colleges' range of water bodies was particularly welcome

Our paper on the extinct Chilonopsis land snails of St Helena has just been published in @ejtaxonomy.bsky.social. We review all the old material, including what we could find of Charles Darwin's collection, and describe a new species from ongoing palaeontological work doi.org/10.5852/ejt....

My Cambridge Colleges' biodiversity study is well underway. On Wednesday we did @downingcollege.bsky.social and @emmanuelcollege.bsky.social.

Now just about to start surveys of the biodiversity of Cambridge colleges. Testing out methods @peterhousecam.bsky.social. Not much in the SLAM traps, but a great catch in the moth trap. Lots of Jersey tigers and (less welcome) many hornets!

A couple of fantastic days in Scotland watching beavers at Banff. Amazing views. Also a little mystery - what ate these pond snails (about 10 of them on a log, all broken the same way)? 🌍🦫🐌

Final field work day: a return to Alofi where we found yet another thriving population of Partula obesa. After this fortnight this is probably the most intensively studied wild Partula snails anywhere. Here's the amazing sight of 3 Partula together - hardly ever seen these days. 🌏🐌

Last day of exploration on Futuna. Our first day without finding Partula but we did identify a very good conservation site. Final day's field-work tomorrow. 🌏🐌

We explored the far side of Futuna today but didn't discover anything new. We did though show Partula to the Futunan television crew who came to interview us - I think it was more of a hike than they anticipated. 🌏🐌

After a day's recuperation we headed back up to the summit of Futuna by a different route. We found the same Partula population and several new species. Not much of a view from the top, other than clouds. 🌏🐌

A hike to the top of Futuna to see what we could find. No live Partula has ever been recorded up here and much of the habitat wasn't encouraging. What did we find: yet more Partula of course! 🌏🐌

A record-breaking Partula day today, with 80 found on Futuna, but here is a photo of a robber crab for a bit of diversity.🌏🐌🦀

Our last big survey on Alofi: we found more populations of Partula obesa and what is probably the only observation of a hermit crab using a Partula shell

Exploration of the interior of Alofi today: where Partula obesa were recorded as extinct 15 years ago. We did find one remarkably large population. The forest is also full of black skinks, with blue-tailed ones at the coast.

Another day to Alofi. We have now seen all the recently known Partula sites. Another endemic. Trochomorpha corallina is locally amazingly abundant. Lots of skinks and geckos too. 🌏🐌