Congratulations to our client BHP and our Biologic Seed team for winning the prestigious Golden Gecko Award for 2025!
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Land snails are often targeted during short-range endemic (SRE) invertebrate fauna surveys. Species identification can rely on multiple methods (dissection, DNA barcoding, shell morphology) but often necessitate euthanasia as shell morphology is not always reliable. 
In the interest of protecting ecologically significant animals, we trialed a non-invasive DNA collection technique that has been used successfully for other gastropods: sterile swabs.
The trial was conducted on live Rhagada (Stylommatophora: Camaenidae) collected from Pilbara SRE surveys. Individuals were encouraged onto sterile swabs to “walk” around and leave a trail of mucus.
These swabs were treated as a regular sub-sample of tissue and placed into buffer for DNA extraction, amplification and sequencing.
The results
From fourteen individuals, eleven were successfully sequenced and identified using COI (658bp) for DNA barcoding (Figure 1). This rate is comparable to current subsampling methods.
Additionally, snails were released back into their habitat after the swabbing trial.
This technique is now being applied for all snail subsampling, and we are trialing it on other invertebrate groups.
Our molecular team are continuing to investigate more non-invasive eDNA services to enhance species tracking and monitoring efforts.
