mei 2007
Hunting for...snails
07-05-2007 20:56
Last week I was in
Italy, Sicily for a holiday. As I like to collect
snails during my holidays - even if they're not in
the Neotropics :-) - I offered to do some hunting for
a friend. He said "Clausiliidae are to be found in
the western part of Sicily, where there are
calcareous rocks, but not in the eastern part where
there is volcanic soil". So my hope for happy snail
hunting was not very high as we hired a house in the
south-east near Syracusa. But as we hired a car too I
thought "we'll drive to the west".
Once on Sicily it quickly turned out that distances are large and roads in the south are busy and small. As a consequence travelling takes time! Since my family was not up for an all-malacology holiday I had to compromise. But as soon as we set out on the first day for a trip to a nature reserve near Noto I found the first snails (though no Clausiliidae).
A few days later when we visited the Necrópoli di Pantálica, I found my first clausiliids. Later on in the week I took a whole day to tour the southeast and to collect. Despite the warning of my friend there were ample opportunities to find snails :-))
A list of localities can be found here. They are mapped with Google Earth (labels in Dutch)
During the evenings I found some time to fiddle with the sequencing results. Still on the lower side of the learning curve, I'm afraid.
Once on Sicily it quickly turned out that distances are large and roads in the south are busy and small. As a consequence travelling takes time! Since my family was not up for an all-malacology holiday I had to compromise. But as soon as we set out on the first day for a trip to a nature reserve near Noto I found the first snails (though no Clausiliidae).
A few days later when we visited the Necrópoli di Pantálica, I found my first clausiliids. Later on in the week I took a whole day to tour the southeast and to collect. Despite the warning of my friend there were ample opportunities to find snails :-))
A list of localities can be found here. They are mapped with Google Earth (labels in Dutch)
During the evenings I found some time to fiddle with the sequencing results. Still on the lower side of the learning curve, I'm afraid.