SEYCHELLES ISLANDS FOUNDATION, C ONEZIAOne of the first species reported extinct as a result of climate change—a tiny, colorful land snail endemic to Aldabra atoll in the Seychelles Islands—was rediscovered by an expedition led by the Seychelles Island Foundation in August this year.
Prior to this, the last specimens of deep purple, pink-striped Aldabra banded snails (Rhachistia aldabrae) were sighted in 1996. Searches for the snail conducted in 2005 and 2006 were unsuccessful, and it was declared extinct in 2007, when a Biology Letters study by Justin Gerlach of the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles in the U.K. correlated the organism’s disappearance with a decrease in rainfall as a result of short-term climate change. The snail’s extinction was cited as an example of a species whose loss was directly caused by climate change, rather than other factors such as habitat loss or invasive species, earning the tiny creatures a mention in the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
While good news for snail lovers ...
