Long-forgotten samples may help save species

ANN ARBOR—Some 600 vials stored in a University of Michigan freezer for more than 30 years may hold keys to rescuing nearly extinct Tahitian land snails.

The snails, famous since the late 1800s as classic examples of species that had rapidly diversified in an isolated environment, later became victims of a “spectacularly inept attempt at biological control,” said U-M mollusk expert Diarmaid