In 1923 W.L. Abbott collected a fragment of a land snail shell in the far-flung mountains of the Dominican Republic (DR) at a remote place called Polo*. The snail was named in 1946 Kisslingia poloensis by Paul Bartsch, the expert on the group at the time. It was not seen again for 91 years, when a collector found two specimens, after hours of looking, near the namesake village. This group of land snails, the Annulariidae, is of great interest to me, and as luck would have it, I was going to the DR in June. With my trusty colleagues we made a detour to downtown Polo. Polo can only be reached by a dirt road that winds up the mountain and then dead-ends at the village. We began looking in a roadside cut and after a long, hot, scorpion-filled, goat-laden, cacti-infested, steamy length of time we had found exactly – none. Two young gentlemen happened by and we “hired” them to help look. Rather embarrassingly, within minutes they had found two. We decided to head uphill for metropolitan Polo and promised to recompense them on the way back down. Less than a half-hour later we returned to find that an entire village had been enlisted and the kids had, probably without breaking a sweat, found 50. 50!
Pesos and snails changed hands. Everyone was happy. I now have potential DNA from this obviously seldom seen snail for comparative work on the family. Seldom seen by malacologists anyway. The kids knew exactly where to find them, probably seeing them on a daily basis. All our fancy “book lernin” was no match for the real experts, the young naturalists of Polo.
Our crew of expert collectors. Note the bag of snails.
A free-range, ultra-rare Kisslingia poloensis Bartsch, 1946.
Kisslingia poloensis Bartsch, 1946