Critically Endangered
Achatinella lila
Achatinella lila
Achatinella lila is a land snail in the family Achatinellidae (order Stylommatophora), recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Its shells are glossy, colorful yellow and green. The shell is sinistral, ovate-conic, thin but strong, nearly smooth, brilliantly glossy. The embryonic whorls are burnt sienna brown (weathering to whitish in adult shells), or sometimes there is a light median zone.
The height of the shell is 17.0 mm.
Range and habitat
This species is endemic to the northern Ko'olau Mountains, Oahu.
Prior to the modern reintroductions, the species was limited to a single wild population in the Ko'olau Mountains of Oahu.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Snails move on a single foot and feed with a rasping tongue. Island and spring species rarely recolonise once the site is emptied.
In crisis
Achatinella lila is the first Hawaiian achatinelline to be reintroduced from captive stocks, a significant milestone in the conservation of the endemic gastropod fauna of the islands. The snails also have significantly long lifespans (>10 years), making these species particularly prone to population declines as a result of invasive predators, habitat alteration, and over-collection. Six snails from the imperiled population were taken in 1997, and along with their offspring were grown until introductions were possible, in numbers of 50 snails per cohort.
Frequent photograph-based identification monitoring occurs, along with searches for shells of dead individuals. Future conservation measures include continued monitoring and augmentation of the current population with new cohorts.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Achatinella lila is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Achatinella lila, Wikidata item Q3319426. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
