Abstract
Sabah, situated in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, has the largest number of islands in Malaysia with more than 500 of various sizes and degrees of isolation. However, information on the islands’ biodiversity is limited. This study provides an up-to-date checklist of land snail species found on 24 west coast islands in Sabah. A total of 67 species (nearly 20% of the total number of land snail species in the state) representing 37 genera and 19 families is enumerated based on systematic field surveys of 133 sampling plots, BORNEENSIS database records and species checklists published between 2000 and 2016. The number of species on the islands ranges from four to 29. Labuan Island has the highest number of species (29), followed by Tiga Island (25), Mantanani Besar Island (24) and Gaya Island (23). However, the populations of some land snail species may have declined as several previously recorded species on the islands were not found in a recent systematic field sampling. This checklist is provided as a baseline inventory for future island land snail studies and to better inform biodiversity conservation plans of marine parks and other islands on the Sabah west coast.
Highlights
The island of Borneo is recognised as one of the mega biodiversity hotspots in the world (Myers et al 2000)
Eleven of the selected islands are in the three gazetted parks, namely Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, Pulau Tiga Park and Labuan Marine Park
The checklist reported a total of 67 land snail species belonging to 37 genera and 19 families, of which 18 species were Caenogastropoda, four Neritimorpha and 45 Pulmonata (See supplementary file 1)
Summary
The island of Borneo is recognised as one of the mega biodiversity hotspots in the world (Myers et al 2000). Documentation of the biodiversity in Sabah began in the 19th century with explorations by European naturalists in this region. One of the first comprehensive checklists of land snails was published by Issel (1874) who documented an estimated 100 species from Borneo. Their explorations resulted in several published reports and descriptions of a number of new species (Pfeiffer 1852, 1863; Godwin-Austen 1891; Smith 1894). In the 21st century, knowledge on Sabah land snails expanded greatly with the publication of detailed taxonomic revisions of certain land snail groups (Liew et al 2009; Vermeulen et al 2015), inventories of Borneo land snails (Schilthuizen and Vermeulen 2003; Schilthuizen et al 2011; Uchida 2013) and ecological studies (Schilthuizen and Rutjes 2001; Schilthuizen et al 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Liew et al 2008, 2010). The number of land snail species documented in Sabah is approximately 350
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