Abstract
Very little is known about the malacofauna in district Swat of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, situated in the Northern part of Pakistan. The Swat valley possesses a variety of suitable environmental conditions, providing different types of habitats for both flora and fauna. Taken into consideration these points, the present study was conducted to explore the terrestrial snails diversity in agricultural and non-agricultural fields in the lower Swat valley. A total of 417 shells were collected from three sites: Kokarai, Kanju Township, and Deolai. Based on conchological features, three families: Bradybaenidae, Hygromiidae, and Zonitidae were identified using different terrestrial snail keys. In Kokarai and Deolai, shells of members of all the above-mentioned families were found from agricultural fields. In Kanju Township, shells of members of the family Bradybaenidae and Zonitidae were found. From these findings, it was concluded that district Swat possesses a significant malacofauna which was unexplored before and aided more to the existing literature on malacofauna. It also supports the idea that the agroecosystem is rich in species diversity. Further in-depth and extensive study is recommended to be carried out for a detailed taxonomy of the described terrestrial gastropod families.
Highlights
Phylum Mollusca is the second largest taxon of the animal kingdom after Arthropods (Abbott, 1989; Chapman, 2009)
A few studies were carried out in different regions of Pakistan regarding gastropods diversity such as the diversity of land snail was studied in different croplands like sugarcane, wheat, fodder vegetable field and ditches in Faisalabad district (Punjab), Pakistan
A total of 417 shells were collected from three sites: Kokarai, Deolai and Kanju Township (Table 1)
Summary
Phylum Mollusca is the second largest taxon of the animal kingdom after Arthropods (Abbott, 1989; Chapman, 2009). They are found in both aquatic and terrestrial habitats (Miller and Harley, 2001) They are very important that is ranging from eating table such as Helix pomatia (escargot) that is used as a food in many countries worldwide like France and China to their role as an intermediate host in the transmission of parasites such as genus Schistosoma (Trematods), causing Schistosomiasis (Miller and Harley, 2001). The study concluded that the croplands possess a high diversity as compared to ditches because of the polluted environment in ditches (Altaf et al, 2016) Many snail species such as Zootecus agrensis, Z. chion, Z. polygyratus, Z. gracilor minor and Z. pullus were reported from five sites of Baluchistan and Sindh, Pakistan (Girod and Balzarini, 2017). 1774, and Candaharia rutellum, Hutton, 1849 were reported from the Northern area of Pakistan (Wiktor and Auffenberg, 2002)
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