Achi news desk-
The Shagreen snail was thought to only be found in Canada on Middle Island and Pelee Island in Lake Erie, but photographs uploaded to a crowdsourced nature app have proven that the snail is endangered on the mainland, just outside of Woodstock, Ont.
Scott Gillingwater, an endangered species biologist with the Upper Thames Conservation Authority, saw what he thought was a Northern Three-Toothed Snail about a year ago. He took some photographs and uploaded them to iNaturalist.
“When you submit some of these sightings to anNaturalist, you have a community of many thousands of people looking over these observations to see if your identification was correct,” he explained.
This April, someone said it wasn’t a Northern Threetooth but an endangered Shagreen snail from southwestern Ontario.
Both snails look similar, but there are a few differences, most notably that the Shagreen has a “closed” umbilicus, which is “basically where the spiral coils of the shell meet in the middle of the underside” of the shell .
The underside of the endangered Shagreen snail.
Scott Gillingwater/UTRCA
Wanting to be absolutely sure, Gillingwater contacted two snail experts – Annegret Nicolai and Robert Forsyth – who confirmed the identification using his photographs. Since the first look, a second specimen has been found on the property.
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The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada’s latest status report from 2019 said the snail is “currently known to persist on only two islands.” It had previously been found in the Leamington area and around Point Pelee National Park in Canada. It is also found in some parts of the United States.
“The discovery of this snail outside of its previously known range is exciting in many ways,” said Gillingwater, adding that he hopes the sighting can spur recovery efforts.
“Knowing that it still exists on the mainland may make other people look, it may get other people interested. And hopefully there are additional populations that have yet to be discovered. The species prefers to be in the Carolinian zone, which is a small part of southwestern Ontario where these animals exist. “
The declining population of the Shagreen snail is a bit of a mystery, Gillingwater added, noting that habitat loss and the effects of climate change are “likely culprits.” He hopes the current mainland snails will have some answers.
“We will continue to carry out surveys, trying to document this species on the property and hopefully in neighboring properties. And that will at least allow us to understand what is happening with the current population, if the habitat is slightly different from where they are found on Middle Island and Pelee Island – both sites last one left here,” he said.
“The answers are often in the animals that are still here.”
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
