Madagascar's Land Mollusks

环境退化正在迅速导致全球许多本土蜗牛灭绝。没有哪个地方比马达加斯加更令人心酸，马达加斯加虽然比德克萨斯州略小，但本土蜗牛的种类大约是整个美国大陆的三倍。这个为期三年的马达加斯加陆螺项目将(1)发现600-1000个新物种和几个新属；(2)将佛罗里达自然历史博物馆的博物馆地块数量增加两倍(一个地块相当于一个地点的一个物种)，达到50,000多个，这是一个前所未有的数据库，用于探索物种分布和丰富度的模式；以及(3)使人们有可能在该国识别任何马达加斯加陆螺。尽管数以千计未被发现的热带陆地蜗牛物种目前正在灭绝，却没有留下化石记录，但全世界严重缺乏收集和记录这些蜗牛的专家。该项目将通过培训一名美国博士生，以及培训和准备研究生院2至4名美国本科生和1名马达加斯加学士学位后学生，帮助缓解这一短缺。该项目将通过及时和极其详细的方式响应这一呼吁，为保护做出强有力的贡献。该项目将建立关键的基础设施(四轮驱动、背包和收集设备等)。让其他研究人员弥补我们在科学和药理学知识方面的差距。

Environmental degradation is rapidly driving many native land snails to extinction worldwide. Nowhere is this more poignant than in Madagascar, which, although slightly smaller than Texas, has about three times more species of native land snails than the entire continental United States. This three-year project on Madagascan land snails will (1) discover 600-1,000 new species and several new genera; (2) triple the number of museum lots (one lot equals one species from one site) in the Florida Museum of Natural History to more than 50,000, an unprecedented database for exploring patterns of species distributions and richness; and (3) make it possible to identify any Madagascan land snail in-country. Despite the fact that thousands of undiscovered tropical land-snail species are currently going extinct without leaving a fossil record, there is a severe, worldwide shortage of specialists to collect and document them. This project will help alleviate that shortage by training one American doctoral candidate, and by training and preparing for graduate school two-to-four American undergraduate students and one Malagasy post-baccalaureate student. This project will contribute strongly toward conservation by meeting that call in a timely and extremely detailed manner. This project will establish crucial infrastructure (four-wheel-drive, backpacking and collecting equipment, etc.) to allow other researchers to bridge those gaps in our scientific and pharmacological knowledge.