Kevin Bonham Curador

Unido: 24.ago.2015 Última actividad: 28.mar.2024 iNaturalist

Expert in Australian land snails (Gastropoda:Pulmonata), especially Tasmanian and Victorian. Also interested in (and skilled at identifying) Tasmanian orchids, millipedes, centipedes and some beetle groups and Archaeognatha (bristletails), as well as marine Cypraeidae (cowries) from anywhere. Experienced in ordinal sorting of invertebrates and in Tasmanian mammal photo IDs. Honorary Curator, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Advice to people posting images of Australian land snails:

1. Don't use suggested IDs, they are often from the wrong continent, or the wrong part of Australia, or just a common species that occurs in the same area. Plus the automatic ID feature is hopeless with slugs. If you don't know what a snail or slug is, ID it as Gastropods.

2. Photograph the snail from multiple directions. Especially, for some common species a view of the underside of the shell is essential for identification.

3. Don't obscure location unless you don't want people knowing where you were, or unless the species is a very large snail that might be at risk from the pet trade. If a species is identified as threatened, the site will automatically obscure it.

4.Most people struggle with estimating the size of small objects. If you have a ruler handy, measuring the shell width can be useful information to help with an ID.

5. Theba pisana is not the only "white Italian snail" in Australia. Cernuella is another. If you're sure it's one of these but not sure which, ID as Superfamily Helicoidea.

6. The very common slug genus Ambigolimax is not always in the suggested ID model for Australia. If you have a slug that has two stripes on its mantle and body and that does not match the suggested ID list of slugs it may be that. Ambigolimax cannot be identified to species from photos (dissection/DNA required).

7. Don't use mirror imaging when processing pictures of snails. This produces an unnatural "wrong way round" look and creates confusion about whether it is a mirror image or a genuine and very rare freak of nature,

NB If I only ID your snail to family, I may come back and ID it to genus or species later. For snails from NSW and Qld especially, you may get a more precise ID faster by posting on Snails of Australasia facebook page.

Usual ID sources outside Tas/Vic are Stanisic et al (2010) for Qld/NSW/ACT and Stanisic et al (2018) for SA/WA/NT, accompanied by cautious use of ALA records to check distributions.

From time to time checking some NZ IDs, mainly introduced species.

I generally don't respond to ID request tags from outside Australia.

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