World Congress of Malacology Antwerp ... - Unitas Malacologica

CENSOR “Climate variability and El Niño Southern Oscillation: Impacts for Natural Resources and
Management” contract N°511071. This is CENSOR contribution N° 113.
Micro-scale assessment of land snails on coarse woody debris in central European beech forests
Páll-Gergely, Barna 1 ; Sólymos, Péter 2
1. Department of General and Applied Ecology, University of Pécs, Ifjúság Ave. 6, 7624 Pécs,
Hungary,
Email: pallgergely2@freemail.hu
2. Department of Ecology, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Szent István University, Rottenbiller Str.
50, 1077 Budapest, Hungary,
Email: Solymos.Peter@aotk.szie.hu
Coarse woody debris (CWD) plays essential role in shaping species richness and composition of
natural forests of temperate Europe. We investigated the effects of CWD properties on land snail
assemblages in six beech forests in Hungary and Romania. We applied 2×8 minutes search sampling
in sample pairs (close to CWD and 2 m apart from it), we measured CWD diameter and decaying
stage, the depth and moisture of the leaf litter. We used generalized linear mixed models, generalized
additive models and regression trees to analyze our data. Our results revealed that decaying stage of
CWD has profound direct effect, while leaf litter properties around CWD and diameter of CWD are
of much less concern. Richness was higher near CWD than distant to it. We were unable to detect
any systematic changes in species composition due to decaying stage. Most of the species tended to
prefer micro-sites close to CWD or under bark. Further, abundant species tended to aggregate, and
micro scale richness was limited and independent of local richness of the site. Richness was
positively correlated with CWD diameter in earlier decaying stages. These indicate that micro-scale
limitation of the number of co-occurring species is driven by dispersal limitation and not by
competition for limited resources.
Amphidromus revisited: A fresh look at the conchologist’s favourite land snail genus
Panha, Somsak 1 ; Sutcharit, Chirasak 1 ; Tongkerd, Piyoros 1 ; Prasankok, Pongpun 2 ; Yasin,
Zulfigar 3 ; Tan, Aileen 3 ; Ng, Peter 4 ; Clements, Reuben 4 ; Moolenbeek, Robert 5 ; Maassen, Wim 6 ;
Naggs, Fred 7 ; Asami, Takahiro 8
1. Animal Systematic Research Unit, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn
University, Phyathai Road, Bangkok 10330, Thailand,
Email: somsakp@sc.chula.ac.th, Jirasak4@yahoo.com, Piyoros_Tongkerd@yahoo.com
2. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Srinakarintrwirote University, Sukhumvit Road,
Bangkok, Thailand,
Email: Prasankok@yahoo.com
3. Centre for Marine and Coastal Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Pulau Pinang, Malaysia,
Email: dir_sea@usm.my, aileen@usm.my
4. Biological Sciences Program, National University of Singapore, Lower Kent Ridge, Singapore,
Email: peterng@nus.edu.sg, g0403015@nus.edu.sg
5. Department of Malacology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
6. Leiden Museum, Leiden, The Netherlands,
Email: moolenbeek@science.uva.nl, Maassen@Naturalis.nnm.nl
7. Department of Zoology, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK,
Email: f.naggs@nhm.ac.uk
8. Department of Biology, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Japan,
Email: asami99@shinshu-u.ac.jp
The attractive colour variation found in Amphidromus shells has long placed them among the most
highly sought after land snails by shell collectors and attracted the attention of many nineteenth
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