Martina Panisi

• Master of Conservation Biology
• Researcher at BIOPOLIS

Managing invasive species is crucial to mitigate their negative impacts on ecosystems, yet conflicts may arise when their social benefits are disregarded. Human pressure on the endemic‐rich forests of São Tomé has been high since the island was discovered by the Portuguese in the 15th century, and numerous species have been introduced. These includ...

Since it was first described in 1901, the Príncipe thrush Turdus xanthorhynchus has been rare and restricted to the native forest in the south of Príncipe Island. The Obô giant land snail Archachatina bicarinata, however, was widespread across the island and at least locally abundant until the 1990s. Since then its population has collapsed, and now...

The oceanic islands of the Gulf of Guinea are known for their remarkable endemic species richness, and the terrestrial Mollusca group is particularly distinctive. This chapter summarizes the exploration and diversity of this group, discussing biogeography, evolution, ecology, and conservation to identify persisting knowledge gaps. Terrestrial malac...

The islands of São Tomé and Príncipe host extraordinary biodiversity that evolved over millions of years without human presence. In the fifteenth century, the colonization of the islands created a society of migrants, associated with extensive land-use change and generally low knowledge and stewardship of autochthonous biodiversity. Formal educatio...

Oceanic islands are renowned for their high proportions of endemic fauna and flora resulting from isolation and associated accelerated speciation and adaptive radiation. Unfortunately, these biotas have also suffered most from direct human-induced extinction, a product of habitat destruction and introduced competitors and predators, or even a fast-...

Obô Giant Snail Archachatina bicarinata has most recently been assessed for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2022. Archachatina bicarinata is listed as Endangered under criteria B1ab(i,ii,iv,v)+2ab(i,ii,iv,v).

The rapid decline of the Obô giant land snail Archachatina bicarinata (Bruguière, 1792; Fig. 1) has long been identified (Gascoigne, 1994; Dallimer & Melo, 2010; Panisi et al., 2020) in the oceanic islands of Príncipe and São Tomé (Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, Central Africa), where it is endemic. The species was abundant and wides...

Species that the public knows and is willing to protect often do not align with international conservation priorities. Assessing perceptions on wildlife is thus essential to guide conservation initiatives, especially in island developing states where native and introduced species often have contrasting values for biodiversity. We used a game to ass...

This document provides supporting information for the Obô Giant Snail Archachatina bicarinata Red List assessment. It consists in a summary of the ex-situ efforts applied for the conservation of the species. Data was collected in the context of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund's project 109607, by Alisei Onlus NGO and in collaboration with L...

This document has been reviewed and endorsed by the Mid-Atlantic Island Invertebrate Specialist Group (MAIISG) - part of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It is available to download via the MAIISG website: http://www.maiisg.com/resources/publications/. The recommended citation is a...

Habitat loss and non-native species are two key drivers of biodiversity decline. The importance of their interactions is widely recognized, but remains poorly understood. We used the endemic-rich bird assemblage of São Tomé Island to study this type of interactions. We built species-specific binomial generalized linear models for 33 terrestrial bir...

The first comprehensive checklists since the works of Germain in 1916 are presented for the terrestrial Mollusca of São Tomé and Príncipe. The fauna currently known comprises 59 species for São Tomé, 45 for Príncipe, and a total of 86 species in the country as a whole. Seven species of terrestrial Gastropoda are newly described from the island of S...

Forest Giants is a conservation project for the protection of the threatened land snail, the Obô Giant Snail Archachatina bicarinata, which is rapidly declining in Sao Tome and Principe. With this project we want to highlight the importance and impact of research storytelling to new conservation projects in the search for audience, interest and mos...

The loss of native biodiversity is a major consequence of the introduction of invasive species. This process has larger repercussions when it occurs in restricted areas with high levels of endemism, such as islands. Knowing the ecology of invasive species, namely their habitat preferences, distribution and potential interactions with local biodiver...

Ecological indicators are currently developed to account for the different facets of loss of biological diversity due to direct or indirect effects of human activities. Most ecological indicators include species richness as a metric. Others, such as functional traits and phylogenetic diversity, account for differences in species, even when species...

Ecological indicators are currently developed to account for the different facets of loss of biological diversity due to direct or indirect effects of human activities. Most ecological indicators include species richness as a metric. Others, such as functional traits and phylogenetic diversity, account for differences in species, even when species...