The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.

Abstract

THIS is not the typical textbook analysed for its usefulness to conservation biology usually presented in these pages. It is that occasional and unexpected book with the potential to inform and encourage conservation biology. In reviewing this book I was excited to see if it could achieve one of the aims it clearly sets out to achieve – to bring readers closer to snails and malacology. I am always searching for avenues of writing that can simultaneously enliven specialists and generalists in any area of biology and conservation. This book clearly falls under this criterion and with this in mind I asked can it show the way for conservation biologists to write along similar lines to broaden the reading base that can be informed by our discipline. Can we learn something from reading it that we can communicate to others?