Animals that desperately need our help!

That is indeed the Wikipedia page and, yes, "endling" is quite the stupid word. Believe I came across the page originally a little while ago while reading the page for Rabb's Fringe-Limbed Treefrog.

Still can't access that link for some reason but if it is indeed true it is very sad that such a decline as occurred. I've always liked Partula snails and it's a shame how badly many species are doing. Have only seen Partula nodosa myself.

~Thylo

 

I may be mistaken but I seem to recall Bristol having multiple colonies of a few different Partula species, at least one other also being the only colony left. Can anyone confirm this? And if this is true, are the other species also kept in the same room as the P. faba? If the information is correct, it'd be a huge shame if the same fate came of the other species as well.

While I understand that it probably wasn't avoidable in this case and often times isn't, examples like these are why I don't like the practice of keeping entire assurance colonies of highly endangered species all in one place.

~Thylo

 

Yes, I'm emphatically NOT questioning the judgement of Bristol Zoo, but I would be interested to know why one tank of 38 is better than two tanks of 19 each with one held by ZSL. Is there some sort of minimum viable colony size?

 

Yes they keep a few species. The following are all that I noted down on my last visit, but I can't say these are all of the species they keep!

P. hebe
P. affinis
P. dentifera
P. tristis

They are all kept in the same room in 'Bug World'*, except there was a colony of P. dentifera in the Reptile House.


*Quite out of place in an exhibit which surely is dedicated to members of the order Hemiptera; would 'Arthropod World' be a better name?

 

Even three founders: 1.2 animals originally kept in Berlin.

 

But thylo, what about the Kihansi Spray Toad for Bronx you just told me about yesterday in the chatroom?

 

The Bronx Zoo, Toledo Zoo, Chattanooga Zoo, Detroit Zoo, and Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo all keep Kihansi Spray Toad

~Thylo

 

Whoops, sorry .

In general I think 'Arthropod World' would still be better in general, but 'Invertebrate and Goby World' would cover it best.

 

Here is an article in the high quality Berlin Zoo journal "Bongo" from 1987 (german only):

http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/125/1257684477.pdf

On the last page of this extract it is mentioned that all written evidence indicate that the three Berliner deer were the ancestors of all living pere David deer. This with a reference to Bongo Band 11 (Jones als Author), though I cannot find this one online, though I am sure a zoochatter has this one in his collection.

 

Yeah that is a bit dumb because if a disease gets into that one tank the whole species is gone. If they have two tanks with two different populations then we should still have a few snails instead of them all being gone.

 

Are these the roads were they only lived in three waterfalls in Tanzania but then somebody built a dam so they nearly went extinct because they rely on the waterfalls spray?

 

But as previously mentioned they might need to be kept in a large group situation to properly breed. As I was later informed by someone in the chatroom, the species in question used to be held at five separate collections before they were all pooled together at Bristol for breeding purposes.

~Thylo

 

These would indeed be the toads. The Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Society is actively working on a reintroduction plan for the species last I heard.

~Thylo

 

I just had a look at an Edinburgh Zoo inventory from November 2015; it lists six species of Partula Snail (I'll happily reproduce the list if people would like me too). Rather surprisingly it lists one Partula Faba. I presume this is the last individual from Bristol Zoo.

 

Feel free to post the list

It's possible that the last Bristol animal was moved to Edinburgh but that'd be a bit of an odd move with only one animal left. Perhaps the attempt was to move the remaining few animals with the hope that they'd survive the pathogen elsewhere but all but one still died?

~Thylo

 

The list:

P. affinis 0.0.238
P. faba 0.0.1
P. mooreana 0.0.381
P. suturalis 0.0.353
P. taeniata 0.0.211
P. tohiveana 0.0.340

They are all off-show, so I have no clue how many rooms they are in. That is correct as of November 2015, so the numbers are likely to have changed.