Endangered
Mitchell's rainforest snail
Thersites mitchellae
Mitchell's rainforest snail is a land snail in the family Camaenidae (order Stylommatophora) — Thersites mitchellae, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The shell of this species measures up to 5.5 cm across and is reddish brown to black with two distinct yellow bands.
Range and habitat
Mitchell's rainforest snail is a large, air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Camaenidae. Now this species is the synonym of Thersites novaehollandiae This species is native to Australia.
A significant population can still be found on the Stotts Island Nature Reserve on the Tweed River.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
This nocturnal animal feeds upon leaf litter, fungi and lichen, making these substances its primary diet.
In crisis
It is an endangered species. Unfortunately, Mitchell's rainforest snail is on the endangered species list due to numerous threats. Other major threats consist of the use of herbicides and pesticides, fires, weed invasion, and is also largely tied to deforestation.
This critically endangered snail is now largely restricted to a range of less than 5 km2 of remnant lowland rainforest, scattered around the Tweed, Byron and Ballina Shires of northern New South Wales. Scientists believe that less than 500 mature individuals remain in the wild.
Mitchell's rainforest snail is 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 Mitchell's rainforest snail, Wikidata item Q3075383. 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.
