Marine biologists are studying snails and other marine life from Pacific locations to learn more about species facing extinction.
When Tom Iliffe checked his email a few weeks ago, he read a message about a collection of 30-year-old snails.
This message came to Iliffe, a professor in the Department of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University at Galveston, from Collection Manager John Slapcinsky of the Florida Museum of Natural History. Slapcinsky was inquiring about a collection of Pacific Island snail samples Iliffe had collected more than 30 years ago in the South Pacific. Slapcinsky was helping clean out a vacant office and happened upon a collection of hundreds of snail samples gathered by Iliffe decades prior. He was floored.
A snail expert himself, Slapcinsky told Iliffe his collection could include several new species and perhaps the last-known records of now-extinct snails.
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