Land snails from Mothe, Lakemba, and Karoni Islands, Lau Archipelago, Fiji / by Alan Solem
Biodiversity Conservation
Landsnails sorted from bagged leaflitteron Karoni, Lakemba, and Mothe Islands in the LauArchipelago ofFiji numbered 35 species. Literature and Field Museum ofNatural History collection records add four others foratotal of39species.Therearenow 13 recordedfromMothe,20fromKaroni, and 22 from Lakemba. Nine ofthese taxa are introductions from outside the Pacific basin, dating from European commercial activities; three probably were introduced by Polynesian voyagers; and 27 probably are endemic to Lau. Many of the latter belong to widely distributed Pacific basin species complexes and cannot be assigned a specific name with certainty, but several are restricted tojustone ortwo islandsin Lau. Thediversity ofspecies oneach island does notfollow the species-area curve.