A Field Guide to the Snails of Lord Howe Island

5 Introduction Lord Howe Island is a small volcanic island of just 14 km 2 situated in the Tasman Sea, around 780 km from Sydney (McDougall, Emberton & Stone, 1982). It is a World Heritage Area, has the southern-most coral reef in the world, and is home to 253 species of native vascular plants (103 endemic) and around 45 bird species (Hutton, 2002a, 2002b). A less well-known fact is that Lord Howe Island also harbours over 80 land snail species, the vast majority of them endemic to the island. This is Australia’s highest land snail diversity. These snails range in size from minute (shell diameter of 1 mm) to large (shell height 60 mm) and encompass a great diversity of body forms, habitat preferences and life histories. Most are very poorly understood, and there are certainly more species waiting yet to be described. We hope this guide will both reveal the stunning biodiversity of Lord Howe Island’s land snails, and make it easier for both the novice and the expert to identify them. How to use this guide Each of Lord Howe Island’s native and introduced species is described and illustrated in this book. The species are grouped into genera, families, and higher clades Caenogastropoda, Neritimorpha and Pulmonata. Taxa are listed alphabetically within each group, although families are first divided into endemic (pp 26-142) and introduced (pp 143-152). The correct family can be found by using the Pictorial representation on pages 17-23, or the General key (pp 24-25). Assignent of genera and species names to families are based on MolluscaBase (see bibliography). No taxonomic changes are made - all species currently accepted as valid are included. For each family we give a general introduction and a comparative figure showing the relative sizes of all family members. For each genus and species we provide a description, which includes shell size for snails, with abbreviations H (shell height) and D (shell diameter), or body length for slugs (based on an extended, crawling animal). Measurements are based on adult size. Figures provided for each species include the shell, the live animal (if available) and a map (based on the collections of the Australian Museum; these records can be searched on theAtlas of LivingAustralia, www.ala.org.au ). Descriptive terms are explained in introductory section Land snail identificatio n (pp 7-10), listed in the Glossary (p. 153), and illustrated on