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Chlidonias said:
I think the Wikipedia page referred to may be the one for "endling" (a word I had never heard of before, and a particularly stupid word in my opinion). Anyway that page says "A tank in the Bristol Zoo is the last refuge of Partula faba, a land snail from Ra'iātea in French Polynesia. The population dropped from 38 in 2012[19] to one in 2015.[20]"

The reference for [20] is Captain Cook's bean snail Partula faba where it says "Over the past 20 years the captive population has declined slowly. They have bred, but always at slightly less than the replacement rate. Today just one snail survives, making this the rarest of all living animals."
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That is indeed the Wikipedia page and, yes, "endling" is quite the stupid word. Believe I came across the page originally a little while ago while reading the page for Rabb's Fringe-Limbed Treefrog.

Still can't access that link for some reason but if it is indeed true it is very sad that such a decline as occurred. I've always liked Partula snails and it's a shame how badly many species are doing. Have only seen Partula nodosa myself.

~Thylo:cool:
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Ouch :( quite the rapid decline, then - the numbers in 2010 were reported to be 88, if memory serves, so it does somewhat sound like a pathogen might have compromised the population if it halved in the space of two years.
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yes, this 2010 article BBC News - Bristol Zoo hopes to save last colony of tree snail says "Its climate-controlled room is the only place in the world where the snails, which number 88, can be found. The group has produced 15 young, with the smallest only 2mm long."

In 2012 Five of the world's 10 most at-risk species at Bristol Zoo | Bristol Post says "...this tank of 38 snails represents the entire species. Every single Partula faba snail in existence is living in this tiny glass tank."

It does seem a very rapid decline. I wonder if the 2012 article has mistakenly put 38 instead of 88, and the article I quoted earlier was actually mistaken (i.e. saying one snail when it should have said one colony - especially as the cause given is simply not breeding fast enough)? That might be a bit of a stretch but it has no reference for its claim. Maybe someone could find out directly from Bristol Zoo.
 
I may be mistaken but I seem to recall Bristol having multiple colonies of a few different Partula species, at least one other also being the only colony left. Can anyone confirm this? And if this is true, are the other species also kept in the same room as the P. faba? If the information is correct, it'd be a huge shame if the same fate came of the other species as well.

While I understand that it probably wasn't avoidable in this case and often times isn't, examples like these are why I don't like the practice of keeping entire assurance colonies of highly endangered species all in one place.

~Thylo:cool:
 
ThylacineAlive said:
While I understand that it probably wasn't avoidable in this case and often times isn't, examples like these are why I don't like the practice of keeping entire assurance colonies of highly endangered species all in one place.

~Thylo:cool:
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Yes, I'm emphatically NOT questioning the judgement of Bristol Zoo, but I would be interested to know why one tank of 38 is better than two tanks of 19 each with one held by ZSL. Is there some sort of minimum viable colony size?
 
ThylacineAlive said:
I may be mistaken but I seem to recall Bristol having multiple colonies of a few different Partula species, at least one other also being the only colony left. Can anyone confirm this? And if this is true, are the other species also kept in the same room as the P. faba? If the information is correct, it'd be a huge shame if the same fate came of the other species as well.

~Thylo:cool:
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Yes they keep a few species. The following are all that I noted down on my last visit, but I can't say these are all of the species they keep!

P. hebe
P. affinis
P. dentifera
P. tristis

They are all kept in the same room in 'Bug World'*, except there was a colony of P. dentifera in the Reptile House.


*Quite out of place in an exhibit which surely is dedicated to members of the order Hemiptera; would 'Arthropod World' be a better name? :p
 
ThylacineAlive said:
I may be mistaken but I seem to recall Bristol having multiple colonies of a few different Partula species, at least one other also being the only colony left. Can anyone confirm this? And if this is true, are the other species also kept in the same room as the P. faba? If the information is correct, it'd be a huge shame if the same fate came of the other species as well.

While I understand that it probably wasn't avoidable in this case and often times isn't, examples like these are why I don't like the practice of keeping entire assurance colonies of highly endangered species all in one place.

~Thylo:cool:
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But thylo, what about the Kihansi Spray Toad for Bronx you just told me about yesterday in the chatroom?:p:confused:
 
lintworm said:
Even three founders: 1.2 animals originally kept in Berlin.
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do have any online references where I can read about that? The figure I always see is 18 animals collected from around Europe and only 11 were capable of breeding. The only reference I can find for the original founders of those 18 being solely the Berlin animals and no others (although it said one pair rather than a trio) is a comment on Zoochat.
 
Chlidonias said:
do have any online references where I can read about that? The figure I always see is 18 animals collected from around Europe and only 11 were capable of breeding. The only reference I can find for the original founders of those 18 being solely the Berlin animals and no others (although it said one pair rather than a trio) is a comment on Zoochat.
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Here is an article in the high quality Berlin Zoo journal "Bongo" from 1987 (german only):

http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/125/1257684477.pdf

On the last page of this extract it is mentioned that all written evidence indicate that the three Berliner deer were the ancestors of all living pere David deer. This with a reference to Bongo Band 11 (Jones als Author), though I cannot find this one online, though I am sure a zoochatter has this one in his collection.
 
FunkyGibbon said:
Yes, I'm emphatically NOT questioning the judgement of Bristol Zoo, but I would be interested to know why one tank of 38 is better than two tanks of 19 each with one held by ZSL. Is there some sort of minimum viable colony size?
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Yeah that is a bit dumb because if a disease gets into that one tank the whole species is gone. If they have two tanks with two different populations then we should still have a few snails instead of them all being gone.
 
ThylacineAlive said:
The Bronx Zoo, Toledo Zoo, Chattanooga Zoo, Detroit Zoo, and Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo all keep Kihansi Spray Toad:p;)

~Thylo:cool:
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Are these the roads were they only lived in three waterfalls in Tanzania but then somebody built a dam so they nearly went extinct because they rely on the waterfalls spray?
 
animal_expert01 said:
Yeah that is a bit dumb because if a disease gets into that one tank the whole species is gone. If they have two tanks with two different populations then we should still have a few snails instead of them all being gone.
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But as previously mentioned they might need to be kept in a large group situation to properly breed. As I was later informed by someone in the chatroom, the species in question used to be held at five separate collections before they were all pooled together at Bristol for breeding purposes.

~Thylo:cool:
 
animal_expert01 said:
Are these the roads were they only lived in three waterfalls in Tanzania but then somebody built a dam so they nearly went extinct because they rely on the waterfalls spray?
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These would indeed be the toads. The Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Society is actively working on a reintroduction plan for the species last I heard.

~Thylo:cool:
 
lintworm said:
Here is an article in the high quality Berlin Zoo journal "Bongo" from 1987 (german only):

http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/125/1257684477.pdf

On the last page of this extract it is mentioned that all written evidence indicate that the three Berliner deer were the ancestors of all living pere David deer. This with a reference to Bongo Band 11 (Jones als Author), though I cannot find this one online, though I am sure a zoochatter has this one in his collection.
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nice. Thanks for that :)
 
I just had a look at an Edinburgh Zoo inventory from November 2015; it lists six species of Partula Snail (I'll happily reproduce the list if people would like me too). Rather surprisingly it lists one Partula Faba. I presume this is the last individual from Bristol Zoo.
 
Macaw16 said:
I just had a look at an Edinburgh Zoo inventory from November 2015; it lists six species of Partula Snail (I'll happily reproduce the list if people would like me too). Rather surprisingly it lists one Partula Faba. I presume this is the last individual from Bristol Zoo.
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Feel free to post the list:)

It's possible that the last Bristol animal was moved to Edinburgh but that'd be a bit of an odd move with only one animal left. Perhaps the attempt was to move the remaining few animals with the hope that they'd survive the pathogen elsewhere but all but one still died?

~Thylo:cool:
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Feel free to post the list:)

It's possible that the last Bristol animal was moved to Edinburgh but that'd be a bit of an odd move with only one animal left. Perhaps the attempt was to move the remaining few animals with the hope that they'd survive the pathogen elsewhere but all but one still died?

~Thylo:cool:
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The list:

P. affinis 0.0.238
P. faba 0.0.1
P. mooreana 0.0.381
P. suturalis 0.0.353
P. taeniata 0.0.211
P. tohiveana 0.0.340

They are all off-show, so I have no clue how many rooms they are in. That is correct as of November 2015, so the numbers are likely to have changed.
 
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