Lord Howe flax snail
species of mollusc
The Lord Howe flax snail or the Lord Howe placostylus, scientific name Maoristylus bivaricosus, is a species of large air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Bothriembryontidae.
Description
The Lord Howe flax snail has a brown, pointed shell up to 7 cm long and 2 cm in diameter.
Distribution
This large snail is found only on Lord Howe Island off the east coast of Australia. Its conservation status has declined from common to endangered since rats were accidentally introduced to this World Heritage island in 1918.
Conservation
Species decline
Historical accounts and fossil evidence indicate that the Lord Howe Island flax snail was formerly widespread and abundant on the island. The decline was first noted in the 1940s and the species is now listed as critically endangered.
The black rat is considered to be the major predator of this species and likely to be a significant threat to its survival. European blackbirds and song thrushes (self-introduced around 1950) are also thought to be predators of the snail.
Habitat clearing and modification and habitat disturbance, possibly herbicides and pesticides also add to the species decline.
Recovery
In 2001, a recovery plan was completed to protect and recover the Lord Howe Island flax snail in the wild.
The public source identifies “Lord Howe flax snail” as species of mollusc. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lord, Howe and flax.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q137264896. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1950 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lord Howe flax snail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.