Land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of India: status, threats and conservation strategies

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Published: Sep 26, 2012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o2722.3029-37

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S. Sen
G. Ravikanth
N.A. Aravind

Abstract

Land snails form an important component in the forest ecosystem. In terms of number of species, the phylum Mollusca, to which land snails belong, is the largest phylum after Arthropoda. Mollusca provide unique ecosystem services including recycling of nutrients and they provide a prey base for small mammals, birds, snakes and other reptiles. However, land snails have the largest number of documented extinctions, compared to any other taxa. Till date 1,129 species of land snails are recorded from Indian territory. But only basic information is known about their taxonomy and little is known of their population biology, ecology and their conservation status. In this paper, we briefly review status, threats and conservation strategies of land snails of India.

Article Details

Issue
Vol 4, No 11 (2012)
Section
Reviews

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Author Biographies

S. Sen

Mr. Sandeep Sen is a research intern at the Conservation Genetics Department at ATREE. Basically a geneticist by training, He is studying phylogenetics and population genetics of land snails of the Western Ghats. He is also developing species pages for Indian mollusk fauna.

G. Ravikanth

Dr. Ravikanth leads the conservation Genetics Lab at ATREE. He has been actively involved in working out genetic structure of threatened species in the Western Ghats. He has undertaken a number of research projects related to the conservation and species recovery of economically important and/or endangered species.

N.A. Aravind

Dr. Aravind is a Fellow at ATREE. He has been working on ecology and taxonomy of non-marine mollusk of the Western Ghats for a decade. He is collaborating with Natural History Museum, London on non-marine mollusc taxonomy.