NTB WNPS Monthly LEcture

Not every species roars or soars—some shape ecosystems quietly. Join us to explore Sri Lanka’s extraordinary land snails, and why protecting even the smallest lives matters for conservation

Sri Lanka’s incredibly diverse land-snail fauna is dominated by endemic species. Most of these endemic species are wholly or nearly dependent on natural forest, and most are restricted to small ranges in the wetter parts of the island. The question that underpins her study of this fauna is, “What historical and contemporary forces have shaped what species are found at a particular place?” In this lecture, she will discuss her efforts to investigate this question, explore the approaches used for studying species-rich yet poorly known taxa such as land snails, and highlight the crucial importance of this kind of research for conserving Sri Lanka’s endemic biota

Dinarzarde Raheem is a Senior Lecturer at the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, where she is based at the Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Applied Sciences. Her research is broad-based, cutting across systematics, taxonomy, community ecology, and palaeoecology, with the land-snail fauna of South Asia—particularly that of Sri Lanka and India’s Western Ghats—being a specific focus. She has a wide-ranging interest in natural history collections, encompassing collections-based research, capacity building, collections development, and curation.