Today’s #AtoZ is Enteroxenos, an odd genus in an odd family (Eulimidae). We don’t think of snails as parasites, but parasitism has evolved multiple times. There are LOTS of parasitic snails – both ecto (outside) and endo (inside). So maybe eulimids aren’t that odd after all. Pics coming. (1/7)

Progress made on my big oil painting of nautiluses. 🧡 #nautilus #allonautilus #marinelife #deepseacreatures #mollusks #cephalopods #oilpainting #wildlifeart #animalart 🐡 🦑

My second nautilus is much closer to done after today’s session at the easel. Next weekend, the allonautilus! #nautilus #allonautilus #marinelife #deepseacreatures #mollusks #cephalopods #oilpainting #wildlifeart #animalart 🐡 🦑

✨ SNAIL SCRIBE ARCHIVE - this new 🐌 Zooniverse transcription project is all about molluscan biodiversity data. It seeks to promote the conservation and critical scientific research of these under-appreciated animals! www.zooniverse.org/projects/ske...

More arcaheological limpets for #MolluscMonday 💙 In late prehistory HawaÏ (late 1500s/ early 1600s), shrines were built next to houses, and filled delicate food as offerings, including some neat limpet stacks, some still in their original position of deposition. Source : tinyurl.com/dbjurdw9

Happy #MolluscMonday! Snail shells in traditional Pacific arts: 🐚In the Marianas, Chamorro & Refaluwasch people used akaleha' tree snails to make beaded bags & jewelry 🌏Many Pacific cultures use seashells for islands in stick chart maps, combining art, science, & geography #JoyOfMolluscs

Did you miss our webinar about mercury levels in game fish from zebra mussel infested waters last month! If so, you're in luck because the recording is now live. @maisrc.bsky.social researcher, Gretchen Hansen shared a great presentation about this research! z.umn.edu/MercuryRising #bioinvasions

Meet the freshwater mussel Margaritifera margaritifera. It can live for up to 130 years. It uses salmonid fishes as hosts for its larval stage. It is endangered in Europe but stable in Atlantic North America. It belongs in a different family than most other N. American & European freshwater mussels.

Yo dawg we heard you like shells...the Stimpson chimney clam is a shell in a shell. These little bivalves bore into loose shells, building little chimneys of cemented shell fragments once they grow past the thickness of their host shell. (223)

[New Paper] We found a SECOND SNAIL with HARD SCALES on the foot -- Ifremeria nautilei lives in deep-sea hot vents and makes chitinous scales not by secretion but by cell differentiation, like our own skin! @royalsocietypublishing.org Proceedings B, OPEN ACCESS: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Did you know.. Molluscs are the second most diverse phylum and possibly the most disparate! 🐚🦪🐌🐙🦑 A recent study by Karapunar et al. (2024) documents the phylogeny of Pleurotomariidae, the longest-living gastropod group, comparing different shell characters: buff.ly/2pEof6e @spissatella.bsky.social

We're big fans of snails over here. Here's a species that has less than 10 iNaturalist observations: Sheldonia cotyledonis! 📷 cliffdorse on iNaturalist 📍 South Africa 🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations... #ObservationOfTheDay #InverteFest

The mangrove jingle shell lives attached to the lower leaves of mangroves! It is not actually air living, and still needs to be immersed by the tides occasionally to survive. Still, I consider it a sign of hope that the clams are working on invading our lands and it is only a matter of time. (209)

Enigmonia bognorensis, from the early Eocene of Hampshire UK. 55mya or so, the southern UK (and northern France) were a hot tropical sea, and at the margins were mangroves - and mangrove jingle shells!

It's #InverteFest, so it's time to correct my forgetting to post about my latest paper from a couple months ago. It has *double* the invertebrates: snails, and their parasites! doi.org/10.1093/cz/z...

Happy #MolluscMonday of #InverteFest! Please enjoy these Partula lutaensis (Family Partulidae, Chamorro: akaleha' Luta) These snails are only found on Rota Island in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands 🏝️ #JoyOfMolluscs #MolluskMonday 1/2

Samoana fragilis (Family Partulidae, Chamorro: akaleha'), found on Rota Island in the Northern Mariana Islands and on Guam These snails have translucent shells, so color differences are from their flesh, not their shells #InverteFest #JoyOfMolluscs 🐌

Semi-snails (Megaustenia app.) of Vietnam: an evolutionary link between slugs (no shell) & snails (full shell). Their shells are thin & incomplete, & need to be covered by their skin ('mantle') which offers protection, camouflage, & secretes calcium carbonate to build more shell. #Vietnam #snail

Hi folks. @whenua.bsky.social and I wrote a thing about my favourite snails. bioprotection.org.nz/fridge-to-fr...

Often referred to as the world's most beautiful snail, Polymita picta is a variable species presenting a vast array of colours and patterns. They are now protected in their native Cuba to prevent overcollecting as craft material. #snails #snail #mollusk #snailsky #gastropod #gastropoda #sciart

"Native to the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the Americas...M. strigata has become a notorious invader in parts of the United State... and Southeast Asia such as the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. In 2019, it was first recorded in India’s Kerala backwaters." news.mongabay.com/2025/08/as-f...

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 blog post on the process for creating a natural history museum exhibit is up. (Featuring many mollusks of course!) www.priweb.org/blog-post/ma... 🦑🐚🐌🐙🦪 #invertebrates #museum #fossils #sciCom 🧪

For #TaxonomyTuesday have a look at the variation in shells and opercula of the freshwater snail 𝙎𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙪𝙡𝙘𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙖 𝙢𝙞𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙞 sp. nov. and a putative hybrid Read the full study published in SAB by Sawada et al. (2025): buff.ly/YEb6YbY #Biodiversity #NHM #NaturalHistory #Evolution #Snails #Ecology

Shell flat lay of several Amphidromus species from Bangladesh 🐚 This is figure 4 from the S&B article by Saito et al.: buff.ly/42BzZ0Z

Congratulations to our 2024 Outstanding Paper Prize winners! 🥳👏 @barankarapunar.bsky.social @hoehna.bsky.social You can read their paper on Pleurotomariida (gastropod) phylogeny, Open Access, here🔓: www.tandfonline.com/journals/tjs...

🔎 Amazing close-ups of Semisulcospira kurodai radulae (mollusc mouths!!) 🐌 Figure 10 from the S&B article by Sawada et al.: buff.ly/4aKNLAh

🦠 External morphology of Adalaria proxima 🧫 📄 Published in S&B by Ekimova et al.: buff.ly/wI3p1Zw

🐚 Xeroplana spp. published in S&B by Ezzine et al.: buff.ly/ofdByO3

A study by Ezzine et al. (2025) looks at the phylogenetic position of some snail taxa within the tribe Cernuellini and briefly characterizes the Xeroplana genus. Image shows specimens from England (D = 11.2-12.4 mm) Read the full study: buff.ly/cjK4Im8 #Snails #Systematics #Biodiversity #Taxonomy

Here are two land snails, both alike in dignity. No, wait. That’s the Montagues and Capulets. These snails live on land (which is the very low bar for defining a land snail) but there are distinct differences between them. (1/12) #snails Pics: © Dee McMahon CC BY-NC © Reiner Richter CC BY-NC-SA

How to recognize akaleha' on Rota vs other snails #JoyOfMolluscs Akaleha' 📏 adults ~1/2 inch long 🐚 flared "lip" around adult shell opening 🌴 in the jungle on plants 🌈 Partula lutaensis: many different colors 💛 Samoana fragilis: yellow & dark brown splotches 1/4

[New Paper] in @zse.pensoft.net names Bathylepeta wadatsumi, the world’s DEEPEST true limpet from 6 km deep! Giant sized (4 cm) for this depth, we named it after the god of sea in Japan & also the Large Monk “Wadatsumi” from the manga series ONE PIECE! OPEN ACCESS: doi.org/10.3897/zse....

📢New paper: Led by Zhang Le-Jia & Yen Yu-Hsiu, with Chen Zhe-Yu, Du Li-Na, me, Thomas von Rintelen (2025). A #newGenus of river #snails, Bakyietaia (Mollusca, Viviparidae), from South China and the Indochinese Peninsula. 🔓 European Journal of #Taxonomy doi.org/10.5852/ejt.... 7️⃣ new comb. 🔟 new spp.

he Partula obesa snail rescue mission finally reaches Futuna. First impressions are great. The snails disappeared from Futuna a few years ago but were still on Alofi at the start of the year. Alofi looked fantastic as we flew over. 🌏🐌🧪

Our first visit to Alofi island today, to visit the site where Partula obesa had been found early in the year. We found a healthy population. Intriguingly there is no sign of predators ever having reached that site. 🐌🧪🌏

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. 🌏🐌

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.

Our understanding of species colonisation of oceanic islands has exploded, revealing unknown multiple colonisation events! Using a species complex of endemic weevils on the Canary Islands, the consequences of multiple colonisation dynamics were explored🌍 🧪 👇 academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

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. 🌏🐌

For #MolluscMonday, gorgeous examples of terrestrial snail grazing trails on a steel handrail, where variously sized snails scraped algae with their radulas. Seen a few weeks ago on a walkway over South Fork Peachtree just north of the @emorycollege.bsky.social campus in Atlanta GA. 🧪🐌 #ichnology

SLUG.

Muhammad Azamuddeen Mohammad Nasir, John Pfeiffer, Hanna Hartikainen, Jake Dimon, Alexandra Zieritz (2025) First record of Ensidens telus (Bivalvia: Unionidae) from #Malaysia 🔓 via J. Molluscan Studies doi.org/10.1093/moll... #molluscs 🌏

Weerada Panchot et al. (2025) Damaging potential to rice crops of the invasive apple snail (Pomacea maculata) and the native Thai apple snail (Pila celebensis) under changing temperature conditions in #Thailand 🌏🧪 #BioInvasions 🔓 via Climate Change Ecology doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...

Last week we talked about vertebrates that eat land snails. We looked at lizards, birds and more snakes than entirely necessary. Obvs there are lots more but there’s only so much time and space. Today, it’s all insects. Some of this might not be nice. (1/13)

I once lost a study colony of snails* because of flies. These tiny two-winged bastards found my colony**, laid their eggs, and then their larvae proceeded to nosh their way through my lovely animals. (1/15) * 3, but dramatic convention requires large numbers ** trio

If you can’t wait for the next ICCB - We are thrilled to announce that the next SCB Oceania conference will be held in Nov 2026 together with @newzealandecology.bsky.social in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa NZ! #NZES_SCBO2026 #ICCB2025 confer.eventsair.com/2026-nzes-sc...

First publication from my PhD is out! Do private land conservation policies and programs adequately consider climate change?🌿🌡️ Read: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Huge thanks to my advisors Jonathan Rhodes, @martinemaron.bsky.social, and Michael Drielsma, and to amazing funding partners

This came in the mail today: the beautiful new book by Tom Lathan on extinctions. With beautiful drawings by Claire Kohda. First chapter: Malaysian land snail Plectostoma sciaphilum, driven to extinction because the karst hill where it lived was quarried away 10 y ago.

Yes. Money is being spent on snails. These are unique, remarkable and of huge scientific importance. If we hadn’t destroyed their environment we wouldn’t have to spend the money. And yes Genomics Aotearoa is doing genetic analyses to support effective management. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...