Endangered
Newcombia cumingi
Newcombia cumingi
Newcombia cumingi is a land snail in the family Achatinellidae (order Stylommatophora), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Newcombia cumingi has a sinistral (left-coiling) shell. The shape of the shell is oblong and spindle-shaped. It reaches an adult length of approximately 0.8 inches (20 mm) and its shell is mottled on shades of brown that blend with the bark of its host plants.
Range and habitat
Newcombia cumingi is the only known species of the genus Newcombia from the island of Maui, Hawaii, while six other species of Newcombia live on Molokai. Historically, it was distributed from the West Maui Mountains to the slopes of Haleakalā volcano. In 1994, private natural resource personnel located a small population of Newcomb's tree snails while monitoring transects for alien species in the mountains of west Maui in the Puu Kukui Reserve.
Predation, even so, has had severe impacts on the tree snail fauna of Hawaii and other Pacific islands.
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
The site continued to be visited and snails counted in the four trees between 1999 and 2002, indicating that the population was more or less stable. The single known population of Newcomb's tree snail occurs on private land that is currently zoned and managed as conservation land. The black rat Rattus rattus appears to be a major threat to the Newcomb's tree snail on Maui.
Norway rat Rattus norvegicus and Polynesian rat Rattus exulans are the major introduced predators on extant populations of Hawaiian tree snails. The rosy carnivore snail is a voracious predator on terrestrial and arboreal snails and Hadfield (2007) reported finding several live rosy carnivore snails within the habitat of the remaining Newcomb's tree snails.
Newcombia cumingi 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 Newcombia cumingi, Wikidata item Q4860787. 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.
