When they arrived on the islands, the snails branched out and took on a variety of ecological roles. “Anything that is abundant in the forest is an integral part of it,” says Michael Hadfield, an invertebrate biologist who ran the captive breeding program for rare native Hawaiian snails until the late 2000s.Īnd these creatures are incredibly diverse: There were once more than 750 species of land snail in Hawaii, including a little over 200 in the tree snail family. Records from the 19th century claim that 10,000 or more shells could be collected in a single day. Snails were once incredibly numerous in Hawaii, and the loss of a species is a blow to the ecosystem. “I know it’s just a snail, but it represents a lot more,” says David Sischo, a wildlife biologist with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and coordinator of the Snail Extinction Prevention Program. His death highlights both the vast diversity of indigenous snails-and their desperate plight. Throughout his life, George was a public face for the struggles facing Hawaiian land snails. “I’m sad, but really, I’m more angry because this was such a special species, and so few people knew about it,” says Rebecca Rundell, an evolutionary biologist with State University of New York who used to help care for George and his kin. (Though these snails are hermaphrodites, two adults must mate to produce offspring, and researchers refer to George as a “he.”) That’s when he got his name-after Lonesome George, the Pinta Island tortoise who was also the last of his kind.įor over a decade, researchers searched in vain for another member of the species for George to mate with, to no avail. George was born in a captive breeding facility at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in the early 2000s, and soon after, the rest of his kin died. He was 14, which is quite old for a snail of his kind. George, a Hawaiian tree snail-and the last known member of the species Achatinella apexfulva-died on New Year’s Day.
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