Mollusk Matchmaking, to Save This Queen Snail

As the queen conch, a giant sea snail, has trouble mating in the Florida Keys, the United States, scientists are relocating the mollusk to cooler waters where it can find mates, reproduce, and boost its population.

“This is a really unique and intelligent way of going about taking animals that aren’t part of the breeding population and helping increase the genetic diversity, presumably, and more importantly, the reproductive output,” explains Andrew Kough, a research biologist at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

In 1999 and 2000, queen conchs were relocated, and scientists discovered that once in cooler waters, the heat-stressed conchs bounced back rather quickly. 2017 the population of adult queen conchs stood at 700,000, but following Hurricanes Irma and Ian in 2017 and 2022, respectively, the population dropped to 126,000. In June of 2024, 208 queen conchs were moved to an offshore herd: for the aggregation of conchs to be successful, there needs to be at least 200 conchs present in a one-hectare area.