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The descriptions of the two new additions to the European snail fauna, named Cochlostoma komarnica and Cochlostoma dobrido, have been published today in the open-access Biodiversity Data Journal.
The elegant snails, which do not yet have English names, have conical shells of around 6 mm long and live on limestone rocks, where they graze algae and lichens. Unlike most land snails, they do not carry their eyes on the end of eye-stalks, but on the sides of their head. And their shells come with a circular disk stuck to the animal’s tail that can close off the shell like a door.
The snails were discovered by the teams of Taxon Expeditions, which run real scientific expeditions that anyone can join. Between 2018 - 2025, expeditions in Montenegro were organised as a collaboration of Taxon Expeditions, the non-profit Taxon Foundation, and local partners from the Montenegrin Ecologists Society.
Mixed teams of international researchers, citizen scientists, local students, and conservationists studied the biodiversity of Durmitor National Park and Komarnica Canyon. The new snails were found at several sites during fieldwork in the rugged mountainous terrain, but their novelty only became clear once they were dissected and genetically analysed in the field laboratory.
