Snails are the world's greatest lovers!
And Jamaica is "snail heaven"! It has the highest density of snails
in the world with at least 555 valid species, of which 499 (90%)
are endemic.
Gary Rosenberg and his assistants, Igor Muratov and Lauren, are carrying out a three-year survey of the whole of Jamaica, using sites spaced at approximately 2km. For more information, see Gary's website
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For each site, , the larger snails (live and dead)are removed from litter (Gary and assistant Lauren are in the photo) |
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The remainder of the litter is placed in Berlese funnels where heat from incandescant lights dries the litter from the top and drives the remaining fauna downwards where it is collected in a vial. |
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The carefully-labelled, bagged samples are divided into two sets: one is deposted at the Institute of Jamaica and the other is taken back for analysis to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia http://www.acnatsci.org |
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Dinner with Igor, Gary and Susan |