Land snails and dry vine thickets in Queensland: using museum invertebrate collections in conservation

Abstract

Museum collections are largely untapped sources of key information forthe conservation of invertebrate biodiversity but in many cases thesedata are not readily available to land managers. Meanwhile significantfaunal habitats containing much of Australia's terrestrial invertebratebiodiversity continue to disappear through habitat destruction due tothe application of poor land management techniques.The dry vine thickets of coastal and subcoastal Queensland occur as ascattered archipelago of often small, geographically isolated patches ofdense scrub. Land clearing and fire management practices are havingmajor impacts on this temporally dynamic archipelago of unique refugiaand comparatively few patches remain. These thickets are not renownedfor their Vertebrate faunas but are inhabited by relatively diverseinvertebrate communities including many undocumented land snails.Land snails are useful environmental indicators and biodiversitypredictors, and in the absence of key taxonomic data, the QueenslandMuseum land snail database has proved useful in highlighting theconservation values of these Vine thicket ecosystems.