Justin Gerlach

P Collins – Beyond bats: anatomical correlates of echolocation
A dos Santos – Ultrastructure of nuclear protein complexes in spermatogenesis and fertility
L Fricker – Genetic dissection of the PHO2 gene in common symbiosis signalling pathways (CSSP) during arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis with rice

S Macuda – The development of electrosensory lateral line organs in teleost fishes: insights into the evolution of novel cell types
W Robertson – E. coli with a 57-codon genetic code
F Fang – The edge effect on soil invertebrate communities in tropical secondary forests

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J Gerlach (Fellow) – How to save a species in one easy step (and some tougher cases)
J McCulloch – How many centromeres does it take to rearrange a chromosome? Explaining extraordinary rearrangement rates in sedges and rushes
P Yakushev – Movement ecology of turtles

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A great Peterhouse Biology Symposium yesterday: excellent talks and such interesting topics. Thanks to all participants (and attendees).

list of talks below...

🐌Justin Gerlach's blog post traces the remarkable journey of Partula conservation from the near‑total collapse of wild populations in the 1970s, following the introduction of the predatory rosy wolf snail, to successful reintroduction efforts.

Intriguing that there may be hidden diversity in the invasive terrestrial ribbon worm Geonemertes pelaensis, also good to see some dietary data. It is an active predator of tiny snails, records of arthropods could be carrion feeding

Just published: our paper on 'Re-establishment of Partula tohiveana tree snails in French Polynesia after 40 years of extinction in the wild'. Great results from 2024 that we built on last year, high hopes for other species this year. Oryx - bit.ly/4sCbk6O

Do you have any information on when the use started? In French Polynesia it turns out to be much more recent than we thought (first evidence from mid-1800s).

Geonemertes pelaensis, one of few terrestrial ribbon worms. Maybe s-e Asian originally; spreading from early 1900s, but only relatively recently becoming pretty much pantropical (on islands at least). I've always been interested in the odd little predators & decades ago wrote a paper on keeping them

Only partly done but this brings @peterhousecam.bsky.social's animal species list to over 1,000 species! The milestone species was the 'dry bark beetle' Anommatus rieckei - very odd blind beetle not recognised in the British fauna until 2021 (because it is very similar to two other tiny species)

Now that our undergraduate teaching term is over and I've finished interviewing for next year's intake, I've been able to get back to identifying the invertebrates collected in the colleges biodiversity surveys earlier in the year. I'd forgotten how much material there was still to identify!

Good to see an interesting species record published from @peterhousecam.bsky.social gardens

I've been too busy teaching to look at this in detail, but I did recently get the first results from the samples collected @peterhousecam.bsky.social as our contribution to BIOSCAN insect monitoring. That's helped push the number of animal species recorded in the gardens to almost 1000

My latest paper has just been published in PeerJ; working on this one was a really fun puzzle to solve. We identify an extinct predator on Mauritius from the holes it left in shells of its prey.

Mauritian snail shells show evidence of extinct predators
peerj.com/articles/201...
@peerj.bsky.social

As we approach the beginning of the new academic year this year's @peterhousecam.bsky.social Biology Newsletter is now out islandbiodiversity.com/petnewslette...

Partula reintroduction comes to an end for 2025 with a final monitoring in lovely Papehue valley on Tahiti. Nothing startling today but lots of newborn snails is encouraging. I really hope we can show success with Partula nodosa next year.
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When sorting the shells we found I discovered this: Partula mooreana (first release last year); middle 3 new dead from this year, right one from last year (first evidence of survival for a year). On left unmarked shell of a wild born. Amazing to be so close to population establishment so soon.

Final monitoring on Moorea, and what a day. A good start in the reserve at Fare Natura. Then we found wild-born adult Partula taeniata simulans. I was confident we could do that, so a pleasing find, but...
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Last field survey on Tahiti today: the southern point of Te Pari. Nothing unusual but good populations of Partula hyalina marmorata. The sort of patchy metapopulations we found are probably natural for this species (one of few partulids not to be Critically Endangered or Extinct)
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Today was a search for high altitude snails on Mt Aorai. Finding snails in this environment isn't easy. We did find some Critically endangered Samoana diaphana. The shell is extremely thin and translucent (hence 'diaphana'), the distinctive pattern is on the body inside the shell
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Some encouraging signs for Partula nodosa and affinis today; many released animals found again and many births. We also scouted out possible additional release sites for next year.

Partula are always unexpected. Today we visited a relict population of Partula hyalina and Samoana attenuata. What we didn't expect was to find hyalina eating another snail species. There was a carnivorous Partula in the past, but we've never document predation by hyalina before.

Today was monitoring day on Huahine island and the last day for most of the team. What a day for a big find! Great results from the releases, but even better was finding this tiny one- the first wild-born Partula on Huahine for 31 years. Another great vindication of everyone's hard work
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Today was the last Partula snail reintroduction of the year: Huahine island with more varia and the first rosea to be released since 2019

2nd day of monitoring on Moorea; still great progress with good dispersal and very little mortality despite us finding several of the predatory Euglandina. They may be invasive monsters but I still have a soft spot for their elegance (a picture of one instead of Partula for once)

The great find of the day was this wild-born Partula tohiveana away from the release site - so we had population establishment last year and now range expansion. I couldn't ask for better results without being greedy!

First day of monitoring the released snails on Moorea. Exceptionally good results, for most species there was no mortality at all despite a night of unbelievably heavy rain - not what the zoo snails are used to at all. The snails in the reserve look fantastic

Yesterday was a busy day for Partula conservation. As well as a full day of releases of snails back into the forest on Moorea we had the opening and stocking of the new reserve at Fare Natura. Fantastic to see that go from my wild idea exactly two years ago to this

On Raiatea today reintroducing Partula navigatoria descended from the last wild snails I collected in 1991. This was supposed to happen back in 2020. We also found an excellent site for Partula hebe next year (hopefully)
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Partula releases today: we are trying a new monitoring technique with Partula nodosa using RFID tags. We also visited Tiapa valley to look for Partula incrassa but without success; that's often the way with Partula field research.