Mary Seddon

Measuring progress towards international biodiversity targets requires robust knowledge of the conservation status of species, which is provided by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. However, data and capacity are lacking for most hyperdiverse groups such as invertebrates, plants and fungi, particularly in megadiverse or high‐endemism regions...

With the biodiversity crisis continuing unchecked, we need to establish levels and drivers of extinction risk, and reassessments over time, to effectively allocate conservation resources and track progress towards global conservation targets. Given that threat appears particularly high in freshwaters, we assessed the extinction risk of 1428 randoml...

Stopping human-induced extinctions will require strong policy commitments that comprehensively address threats to species. In 2021, a new Global Biodiversity Framework will be agreed by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Here we investigate how the suggested targets could contribute to reducing threats to threatened vertebrates, invertebrates,...

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents were discovered only 40 years ago. We now know that around 600 of these auditorium-sized oases exist in the vast expanse of the ocean, flourishing with unique life that we are nowhere close to fully understanding. This lack of baseline biodiversity assessments creates an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ conservation dilemma f...

With the accelerating development of direct and indirect anthropogenic threats, including climate change and pollution as well as extractive industries such as deep-sea mining, there is an urgent need for simple but effective solutions to identify conservation priorities for deep-sea species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN...

Hydrothermal vents are rare deep‐sea oases that house faunal assemblages with a similar density of life as coral reefs. Only approximately 600 of these hotspots are known worldwide, most only one‐third of a football field in size. With advancing development of the deep‐sea mining industry, there is an urgent need to protect these unique, insular ec...

Theidentification of key biodiversity areas (KBA) was initiated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2004 to overcome taxonomic biases in the selection of important areas for conservation, including freshwater ecosystems. Since then, several KBAs have been identified mainly based on the presence of trigger species (i.e., species...

Bivalves are ubiquitous members of freshwater ecosystems and responsible for important functions and services. The present paper revises freshwater bivalve diversity, conservation status and threats at the global scale and discusses future research needs and management actions. The diversity patterns are uneven across the globe with hotspots in the...

Freshwater mussels of the Order Unionida provide important ecosystem functions and services, yet many of their populations are in decline. We comprehensively review the status of the 16 currently recognized species in Europe, collating for the first time their life-history traits, distribution, conservation status, habitat preferences, and main thr...

The identification of species at risk of extinction is a central goal of conservation. As the use of data compiled for IUCN Red List assessments expands, a number of misconceptions regarding the purpose, application and use of the IUCN Red List categories and criteria have arisen. We outline five such classes of misconception; the most consequentia...

This Chapter provides an overview of the distribution, status and threats to the freshwater molluscs in the Eastern Mediterranean region. It is very much, an first overview, with over 44% threatened species recognised, and the major threats being modification to natural systems (damming, canalisation and improvements of spring sites), pollution and...

The IUCN Red List of threatened species is biased towards vertebrate animals, a major limitation on its utility for overall biodiversity assessment. There is a need to increase the representation of invertebrates (currently 21 % of species assessed on the List; \1 % of all inver-tebrates). A prioritisation system of terrestrial and fresh-water grou...

This report contains a review of the Threat Status of 183 gastropods and 32 freshwater bivalve species at national level based on our current knowledge of the species. This complements the exercise carried out in Ireland (Byrne et al., 2009). In general over 70% of the British fauna are considered to be Least Concern with 9.4% (18 species) threaten...

Freshwater ecosystems are considered to be in decline, suffering from a large degree of exploitation and pollution and a resulting deterioration in water quality. This chapter reviews the current status of freshwater invertebrates within this ecosystems.

Human population growth and economic development threaten the integrity of freshwater ecosystems globally, reducing their ability to support biodiver-sity and provide ecosystem services. However, our knowledge of freshwater biodiversity is fragmented due to bias in conservation research toward pri-marily terrestrial or charismatic taxonomic groups....

This European Red List highlights that almost half (44%) of the freshwater species and one out of five (20%) of the selected terrestrial molluscs are threatened. This compares with 37% of freshwater fishes, 23% of amphibians, 19% of reptiles, 15% of mammals and dragonflies, 13% of birds, 9% of butterflies and 7% of the aquatic plants, the other gro...

Samples of fossil land snails were made at 14 sites on the island of Porto Santo, Madeiran archipelago. Material in stratigraphical sequences could be dated by A/I racemization calibrated against radiocarbon dating, and against Uranium/Thorium estimates based on Madeiran material. Although errors associated with the oldest samples are large, it is...

The history of the study of the terrestrial molluscs of the Eastern Arc Mountains is summarised and a checklist of species known from each range is presented. Current knowledge of the fauna is patchy but each of the ranges contains endemic species and collectively they support a major proportion of the Tanzanian land-snail fauna. Recent research in...

Gulella mkuu spec. nov. is described from montane forest in the isolated Ndoto Mountains of northern Kenya. Although exceptionally large for the genus, shell, genitalia and radula features suggest it is more closely related to the "G. sellae-ugandensis" complex than to other very large East African species in the subgenus Primigulella Pilsbry. G. m...

This compendium of species provides illustrations, range maps and a conservation status for all endemic landsnails on the Madeiran Islands. It provides a baseline for future research, as it is the first comprehensively illustrated guide to the species on these islands, previous works did not illustrate all the species. A list of errors is available...

We sampled terrestrial molluscs at fifteen elevations between 400 and 2000 m in Mwanihana Forest Reserve, Tanzania and recorded 84 taxa. Four diversity measures - species density (DP), species richness (D20) and observed (SO) and interpolated (SI) alpha diversity - were measured; beta diversity and abundance were also investigated. Mean elevational...

We report on studies in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa over the past 22 years that have yielded estimates of land-snail diversity in the main forest types occurring in East and eastern southern Africa. When supplemented with the results of similar research in Madagascar and West Africa by other workers, the information provides a more det...

We report on studies in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa over the past 22 years that have yielded estimates of land-snail diversity in the main forest types occurring in East and eastern southern Africa. When supplemented with the results of similar research in Madagascar and West Africa by other workers, the information provides a more det...

Little is known about the impact of Late Devensian (Weichselian) aridity on lowland British landscapes, largely because they lack the widespread coversand deposits of the adjacent continent. The concentration of large interformational ice-wedge casts in the upper part of many Devensian fluvial sequences suggests that fluvial activity may have decre...

Invertebrate species represent more than 99% of animal diversity; however, they receive much less publicity and attract disproportionately minor research effort relative to vertebrates. Nonmarine mollusks (i.e., terrestrial and freshwater) are one of the most diverse and imperiled groups of animals, although not many people other than a few special...

We examine the diversity and structure of land-snail faunas in indigenous rainforest communities and three types of forestry plantation in Kakamega Forest, western Kenya. Using plot-based, standardized sampling consisting of fixed-time direct searching and fixed-volume litter sieving we estimated molluscan diversity and abundance in monoculture pla...

AimsTo (1) describe the distribution patterns of land-snails occurring in afromontane forest habitats on Mount Kenya, in relation to elevation and aspect; (2) explore the relations between the land-snail faunas and environmental conditions within the forests.LocationMount Kenya, Kenya.Methods Molluscs were sampled using standardized direct search a...

This paper presents an annotated checklist of the non-marine molluscs of Mount Kenya, based on species records in the literature, museum collections and the results of a National Museums of Kenya Darwin Initiative field study of the molluscs of the forest zone in 1996/97. The checklist is divided into 3 parts. The first contains a total of 111 spec...

There is an impending crisis for the conservation of non-marine molluscs; this animal group includes nearly 40% of all known animal extinctions that have occurred since 1600 AD, which is more than all land vertebrates together. However, the species protected by the Bern Convention and European Habitats and Species Directive do not reflect the prior...

"Helix" argonautula (Webb & Berthelot, 1833) has been reported from both the Canary Islands and Morocco but the systematic position of this taxa and it's affinity to the Madeiran Geomitrinae (sensu Mandahl-Barth 1950) is unclear. Examination of shell material from Morocco and Canary Islands have revealed two distinct and differing species, hence th...

An undescribed Leiostyla collected on the 1995 field-recording expedition to Madeira by the National Museum of Wales is named as Leiostyla colvillei sp. nov. The shell is closely allied to the extinct species Leiostyla wollastoni.

Preliminary results are presented from three seasons' work at the Lower Palaeolithic site at Barnham. The complex stratigraphy is described and a provisional interpretation given, which suggests that the archaeological deposits date to a warm phase after the Anglian (Middle Pleistocene) cold stage. A faunal assemblage from the deposits is described...

A wine amphora found inside a sarcophagus from a cemetery site in Cyrene, Libya contained ten species of fossil land snails. The artifacts within the sarcophagus suggest an age between 475 and 375 BC indicating a period c. 150 years after the city was established by the Greeks. The majority of the land snails are species found today within the regi...

The following represent new records for NW. Africa: Catinella arenaria (which greatly extends the known range), Vertigo antivertigo, V. pygmaea, V. moulinsiana, and Pupilla triplicata. The following species have not been previously recorded from Morocco; Oxyloma pfeifferi, Vallonia costata, Toltecia pusillum, Helicodiscus singleyanus, Zonitoides ni...

The status of Leiostyla in the Iberian peninsula and NW. Africa is reviewed. Examination of material of Leiostyla anglica from Britain and Ireland showed that shell characters such as size, shape, colour and development of apertural teeth were variable within and between populations. Shells of Leiostyla numidica from Algeria were also found to be v...

There are a considerable number of species described from Morocco which have been assigned to the genus Xeroleuca. This survey reviews the status of these and concludes that Xeroleuca should be regarded as a subgenus of Helicopsis. There are two species present in Morocco; one species Helicopsis (Xeroleuca) turcica is very variable in shell form. T...

This gravel pit is in the first terrace of the River Welland often called the Fen Gravels. Organic silt lenses and channel fill have yielded pollen, mollusca and coleoptera and there is a deep organic channel at the base of the sequence. The pollen have still to be examined but the mollusca and beetles show two distinct assemblages - early Devensia...

Undescribed fossils from Quaternary deposits on SW Porto Santo are named as Leiostyla espigaoensis sp. nov., Leiostyla subcorneocostata sp. nov. (Pupillidae) and Actinella (Faustella) morenensis sp. nov. (Helicidae).

Clausilia rugosa has often been regarded as a form of C. bidentata because of close similarities in shell form. However, in genital anatomy rugosa closely resembles parvula in having a long slender loop of penial epiphallus, a character in which both of these differ from all other Clausiia species including C. bidentata. Mapping of the ranges of pa...

The distribution, subspecific variation and genital anatomy of Rupestrella dupotetii are described. Populations recently discovered in NE. Morocco and NW. Algeria have smaller, narrower shells than those from further east in N. Algeria; they are named as R. d. sebouensis subsp. nov.

A detailed analysis is presented of ice-wedge casts in well exposed fluvial sediments containing fossiliferous channel fills. An explanation of their origin is proposed by analogy with contemporary ice-wedge casting in Banks Island, Canada and Spitsbergen. It is demonstrated that (a) extensive casting of ice-wedges occurs within the modern continuo...

Acicula lusitanica sp. nov. is described from south-western Portugal. Acicula algerensis Gittenberger & Boeters is reported from north-western Morocco.