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ISSN 2063-5346
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SPECIES DIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTION OF LAND SNAILS IN MT. MALINDANG NATIONAL PARK, PHILIPPINES

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Honey Jane C. Mascariñas
» doi: 10.48047/ecb/2023.12.si6.701

Abstract

Land snails are crucial to ecosystem maintenance and function. Unfortunately, the importance of land snails has received little attention in biodiversity studies around the world. The study area was sampled using a combination of timed search and visual search methods to investigate the diversity and distribution patterns of land snail species. Twenty land snails were found in Mt. Malindang. Seven of the species gathered were endemic to the Philippines; four were indigenous, and two were introduced species. Their local distribution in connection to environmental variables revealed a 79.1% variance in species abundance and distribution by canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). Additionally, CCA shows that their distribution is most significantly correlated with vegetation type and altitude. Numerous other abiotic, biotic, stochastic, and scale factors are likely connected to the unexplained variance. The land snails identified were not uniformly distributed in the study area, indicating the presence of ecological specialists. The majority of the snails were found to be localized with low levels of abundance. Fourteen species were confined to one vegetation type, while six species were widely dispersed in different vegetation types. Species diversity, richness, and endemism were found to be high in the montane forest. The findings suggested that conservation of this area is necessary to sustain the molluscan diversity. The absence of live Amphidromus malindangensis, a rare endemic to Mt. Malindang, and the abundance of empty shells of Helicostyla cryptica, an endemic to the Philippines, both point to the importance of protecting the Mt. Malindang range.

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