The most endangered of those is Polymita sulphurosa, which is lime green with blue flame patterns around its coils and bright orange and yellow bands across its shell.<\/p>\n
But all the Polymita species are strikingly bright and colourful, which is an evolutionary mystery in itself. <\/p>\n
“One of the reasons I’m interested in these snails is because they’re so beautiful,” explained evolutionary geneticist and mollusc expert Prof Angus Davison from the University of Nottingham.<\/p>\n
The irony, he said, is that this is the reason the snails are so threatened. <\/p>\n
“Their beauty attracts people who collect and trade shells. So the very thing that makes them different and interesting to me as a scientist is, unfortunately, what’s endangering them as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most endangered of those is Polymita sulphurosa, which is lime green with blue flame patterns around its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":116975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[815,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-116974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-genetics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114967869045741266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}