Platydemus manokwari as an invasive species

It was also deliberately introduced into two Pacific islands in an attempt to control an invasion of the Giant East African Snail.

These islands often harbor endemic radiations of rare and endangered snail species, which are a primary source of nutrition for P.

In various areas such as Guam and the Okinawa islands, P. manokwari was introduced to control the population of the invasive Giant African land snail, which had damaged crops and threatened the agricultural industry.

In the Pacific Islands that P. manokwari has invaded, several native land snails, specifically the Partula, Mandarina, juvenile M. aureola, B. similaris, Allopeas kyotoense, and Meghimatium bilineatum have either gone extinct or their numbers have drastically reduced.

[10] P. manokwari is such an efficient and invasive species that it has caused the decline and extinction of gastropods in several islands and is known as one of the ‘100 world’s worst invaders’.

Experiments conducted by Yamaura and Sugiura indicated that P. manokwari can climb trees and track down nonmarine mollusks using olfactory cues.

However, in several other cases, modified versions of parasites and viruses have been used as a biological control agent for invasive species.

Several scientists have theorized that one of the few limiting factors that prevents the expansion of P. manokwari is low tolerance to colder temperatures.

In an experiment done by Shinji Sugiura, P. manokwari were placed in several containers that had a certain amount of land snails in each and allowed to interact with them for a period of fourteen days in temperatures varying from 10 to 26 °C.

According to current data, predation by P. manokwari is the biggest cause of the extinction of several native and introduced gastropods (a class of mollusks that include snails and slugs).

[10] These data suggest that the population of endemic land snails that have not already gone extinct is sharply decreasing in the areas the P. manokwari has been introduced.