Biogeography and ecology of land snails in the Albertine Rift region in Central Africa
The Albertine Rift Region is one of the most species-rich regions in Africa. The high species diversity is due to Pleistocene forest refugia along the rift, where the fauna and flora of Afromontane rainforests survived the ice ages and from which eastern Africa has been colonized postglacially. We have been able to substantiate the existence of the Pleistocene rainforest refugia by analysing the distribution patterns of land snails in Uganda and Rwanda. Species richness of snails decreases from the forest refugia eastwards and the species ranges are nested with centres in the putative refugia. We also investigated the importance of gallery forests along the rivers as dispersal corridors for the rainforest fauna. Gallery forests are often also the last remnants of the originally continuous rainforests and thus represent recent refugia of the rainforest fauna in the cultural landscape. Furthermore, we examined the hitherto neglected snail fauna of the East African savanna and the factors that determine the distribution of diversity in the savanna. In addition, we are preparing systematic revisions of inadequately known snail groups from the Albertine Rift.
Cooperation with Torsten Wronski (University Liverpool) and Anna Apio (Jomo Kenyatta University, Kigali).
Bachelor theses Annika Boxnick and Alessandra Kronschnabel and master thesis Prosper Umuntunundi (external).
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