The introduction of the European Caucasotachea vindobonensis (Gastropoda: Helicidae) in North America, its origin and its potential range

Abstract

We report the introduction of the central and eastern European helicid land snail Caucasotachea vindobonensis in North America. It was first recorded from Rensselaer County in the state of New York in 2015 by a community scientist. From 2016 to 2020, 14 additional occurrences in Rensselaer County, neighbouring Albany County and an imprecisely localized site in the Adirondack Mountains were recorded by community scientists. In 2020, the species was newly recorded at two sites in Schoharie County, NY, and at three sites in Québec, one of them approximately 700 km to the north of the initial record. Partial mitochondrial cox1 sequences from Rensselaer differ from an eastern Ukrainian haplotype only in a single substitution. Therefore, a Ukrainian origin for this introduction is likely, although not certain: the Rensselaer haplotype also differs in only two substitutions from a more widespread haplotype known from Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. An environmental niche model of the species based on occurrence data from central and eastern Europe indicated that a large region from the northern east coast to the midwestern United States is suitable for C. vindobonensis. The Canadian occurrences may indicate that the North American lineage is able to survive colder winters than predicted by the environmental niche model. Caucasotachea vindobonensis is not listed as a pest in Europe and it is unlikely to become an agricultural pest in North America as it prefers rotting plant material over living parts of plants, but its impact on native organisms can hardly be predicted.

The Rapid Expansion of the Jumping Snail Ovachlamys fulgens in Brazil

“…Thus, continued monitoring of its spread is a must, and studies focusing on its interactions with the native fauna to determine its impacts should be a concentrated priority. The number of records already present on iNaturalist (Figure 2) show that this platform (and potentially other community science initiatives) will undoubtedly continue to play an important role in monitoring efforts (see also [12,[39][40][41][42]). Given the public health significance of O. fulgens (i.e., its parasites), the monitoring and control tasks should fall under the umbrella of the Brazilian Ministry of Health and the Health Departments of the affected states.…”

Turning observations into biodiversity data: Broadscale spatial biases in community science

“…These data are being used to answer questions of phenology (Barve et al, 2020; Nowak et al, 2020), species distributions (Johnston et al, 2021), population trends (Neate‐Clegg et al, 2020), phenotypic variation (Drury et al, 2019; Lehtinen et al, 2020), health (Hamilton et al, 2021), and species interactions (Saldivar & Romero, 2022). In addition, these community science platforms are contributing to the discovery of new species and monitoring and management of exotic and rare species (Hausdorf et al, 2021; Jain et al, 2022; Roberts et al, 2022; Werenkraut et al, 2020). The contribution of these datasets to our biodiversity knowledge hinges on whether we understand a variety of biases, especially related to the spatial distribution of observers (Brown & Williams, 2019; Dickinson et al, 2010; Isaac et al, 2014; Johnston et al, 2018).…”