Sampling Snails

So once a snail is found in a given site what happens? They're measured and tagged on the spot.

Since I'm not particularly fond of taking my camera into the field with me at night, I took the below pics here at the station during the day to help understanding.

This medium sized Caracola is 22.5mm in diameter.

I gave a temporary tag (using tape for this example) to this snail finding its way up a concrete post. Instead of smiley faces with crazy hair, the snails are actually tagged with 4 different colors of flagging and a letter/number combo. We attach the flagging to the snail with nontoxic super glue. To the best of anyone's knowledge, this does not give a disadvantage to the snails in terms of being prey.