The mission to save some snails that are victims of their own beauty

But all polymita species are surprisingly bright and colorful, which constitutes an evolutionary mystery in itself.

“One of the reasons why I am interested in these snails is their beauty,” explains the evolutionary geneticist and expert in Molluscs Angus Davison, from the University of Nottingham.

The irony, he said, is that this is the reason why the snails are so threatened.

“Its beauty attracts people who collect and trade with shells. So the same thing that makes them different and interesting for me as a scientist is, unfortunately, what is also putting them in danger.”

In an internet search with Professor Davison, we find several platforms where sellers, based in the United Kingdom, offered polymita shells. A collection of seven shells for the equivalent of US $ 212 was announced in one site.

“We know that some of these species are in real danger of extinction. So it would not be much (yes) someone picks them up in Cuba and markets them, so that some species extinguish.”

The shells are bought and sold as decorative objects, but each empty shell was once a living animal.

Although there are international standards to protect polyma snails, they are difficult to apply. According to the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of wildlife and flora, it is illegal to take out the snails or their shells of Cuba without permission. But it is legal to sell the shells in other places.

Professor Davison states that, with pressures such as climate change and the loss of forests that affect their natural habitat in Cuba, “it is easy to imagine that the collection of shells by people could lead to a population to be locally extinct.”

To avoid this, Professor Davison collaborates closely with Professor Bernardo Reyes-Tur, conservation biologist at the University of the East, in Santiago de Cuba.

The objective of this international project is to better understand how the snails evolved and provide information that helps its conservation.

The work of Professor Reyes-Tur is perhaps the most difficult: working with unreliable energy sources and in a hot weather, has taken Polymita snails to his own home to raise them in captivity.

“They have not yet reproduced, but they are going well,” he told us in a video call.

“But it's a challenge: we have blackouts all the time.”

Meanwhile, in the well equipped laboratories of the University of Nottingham, genetic research is carried out.

Here, Professor Davison and his team can keep small samples of snail fabric in cryogenic freezers. They can use that material to read the animal genome, the biological set of encoded instructions that makes each snail what it is.

The team intends to use this information to confirm how many species exist, how they are related to each other and what part of their genetic code confers their extraordinary and exclusive color patterns.

The hope is that they can reveal those biological secrets before these colorful creatures are bought and sold until their extinction.

“East of Cuba is the only place in the world where these snails are,” Professor Davison told BBC News.

“That's where the experience is located: where people who know these snails, appreciate and understand them live and work.

“We hope to use the genetic information that we can contribute to contribute to its conservation.”

*This article was written and edited by our journalists with the help of an artificial intelligence tool for translation, as part of a pilot program.

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