PREVIEW

A team of British and Cuban scientists has embarked on a mission to save several species of snail whose unique beauty has threatened their very existence. Polymita snails, native only to the forests of eastern Cuba, are renowned for their strikingly colourful and intricately patterned shells. Their beauty comes at a price as collectors and those who make colourful jewellery for tourists are pushing these rare molluscs to the brink of extinction. Every shell once housed a living animal. Yet they are still widely sold as decorative objects or fashioned into jewellery. In an attempt to save the snails, researchers from the University of Nottingham, led by Professor Angus Davison and conservation biologists in Cuba have joined forces in a race against time to understand and preserve these snails. Professor Bernardo Reyes-Tur, a conservation scientist at the Universidad de Oriente in Santiago de Cuba, has taken the extraordinary step of rearing the snails in his own home. While in Nottingham, Professor Angus Davison's team is unlocking the snails' genetic blueprint. Using cryogenic freezers, they store tissue samples and sequence the snails' genomes to better understand what gives them their dazzling diversity in colour and pattern. This genetic work is also vital for informing conservation efforts - both for breeding programmes and for pinpointing which populations are most at risk. The hope is that science can provide answers before the Polymita snails - and their spectacular spirals of colour disappear from their forest home and into collectors' cabinets for good.