Critically Endangered
Partula arguta
Partula arguta
Partula arguta is a tree snail in the family Partulidae (order Stylommatophora), recorded as Critically Endangered.
The tree snail
Partula tree snails live on Pacific islands. A live animal is a few centimetres of shell on a leaf; a lost island population is usually gone for good.
Partulid tree snails are Pacific island endemics. Predatory rosy wolfsnails, introduced to control other snails, emptied island after island.
Range and habitat
This species is endemic to French Polynesia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Partula snails graze micro-algae and fungi on leaves at night. They do not recover once a predator snail is established on the island.
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 last captive individual died on April 14, 1994, and the species is considered possibly extinct, with a 85-90% chance of being extinct.
The rosy wolfsnail and habitat clearing are the documented wrecking ball for Partula on Pacific islands.
Partula arguta 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 Partula arguta — often a short stub, Wikidata item Q288072. 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.
