ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, what is your favorite fragile and endangered species? Cuddly revulsions like the Delhi Sand-Loving Fly, the Patagonian Coughing Weasel, and the Giant Flying Vampire Toad are much too plebeian to be indulged. Join Dr. Schund as a most delectable threatened species is seductively reveled. Phylum: Mollusca Class: Gastropoda Order: Mesogastropoda Species name: Potamopyrgus antipodarum Synonyms: Hydrobia jenkinsi, Potamopyrgus jenkinsi Common namea: Jenkin's spire shell, New Zealand mudsnail These 5 millimeter-long helical conical gems are nearly all female (>5000:1) and live-bearing parthenogenic. They survive fish digestive tracts. Population densities may exceed 100,000 per square meter, which is a close-packed layer of snails. They occupy multifarious microhabitats and niches (fresh water favored; brackish tolerated) and enjoy modest pollution. Originally found in 65 New Zealand mountain lakes, P. antipodarum was in England by 1859 (New Zealand to Australia, then to Britain from southern Australia or Tasmania in ships' drinking water barrels). It is the most common gastropod in England, invading Europe (Italy, Austria's Danube Valley), and going for North America (since 1987: Wyoming, Snake River in southern Idaho). Sydney, Australia P. antipodarum breeds in freshwater tanks and reservoirs, traveling through water pipes to emerge from domestic taps. In South Australia it blocks pipes and meters. (Oecologia 103 509 (1995), J. Molluscan Studies 54 271,290 (1988).) The New Zealand mudsnail is in brobdingnagian supply, along with mosquitoes and corrupt politicians. At its restricted kiwi stomping grounds it is the compulsory dinner of a wondrous and vanishingly rare N-Zed glory to behold parasitic nightmare: The trematode Microphallus exclusively eats New Zealand mudsnails' genitalia (Proceedings of the Royal Society, London B 260 99 (1995); Science 281(5385) 1980 (1998)). Save the gonad-eating Microphallus trematode! Dr. Schund proposes renaming it Microphallus lewinskii and distributing it across the globe (because extinction is forever!). Imbuing your kids with vital knowledge in politically correct American zero- goal education primary grade ecology classes while preserving family values (presumably not William Jefferson Clinton or Charles Manson family values) is left as an exercise for the alert reader. Save our children! Five-millimeter male snails' bantam John Thomases in microscopic supply are dramatically slim pickings, likewise diminutive jade gates of majority females, even if 100,000 of the wee blighters are parthenogenically going at it (immaculate conception!) on every wet square meter at rates so prodigious as to make an Inner City chollo blush. Microphallus lewinskii hovers at the bleeding edge of extinction, fragile and endangered, potentially eating itself out of the pantry as it copiously seeks succor. SAVE IT! Dr. Schund NON-NEGOTIABLY DEMANDS massive Microphallus lewinskii seeding of Britain, Europe, and North America. Diversity must triumph! This cute-as-a-button trematode must be given equal opportunity to affirmatively action its lifestyle across the whole of planet Earth. Anything less would be holocaust! Untold billions of lady snails screaming as their reproductive organs are chomped into compost will fuel a compassionate Wymyn's movement for their liberation. Reprimand Microphallus lewinskii! Exculpate Microphallus lewinskii! Send money, because more studies are needed. Will Microphallus lewinskii impact the Official Greenhouse Effect or Ozone Hole, provide a treatment for AIDS or a cure for cancer? More studies are needed! Getting back to fragile and endangered corrupt politicians... it would be a modest genetic engineering undergrad lab venture quietly funded by an obscure Pentagon-fronting corporation to shake, rattle, and roll Microphallus lewinskii genomes into doing a little species hopping. Imagine Bosnian, Kosovian, Iraqi, Libyan, and Inner City nuisances waking up one fine morning to discover their virility liquefied. Surprise! Won't that be a real bitch, morale-wise? Make the world safe for productive citizenry instead of reproductive warriors. Introduce new and improved Microphallus lewinskii into a bog, fen, swamp, or cocaine warehouse near your home. We embark upon the M. lewinskii project not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Distaff dusky-dermised caterwauling reproductive warriors might suspect something is up when they progress from menarch to menopause in the same month. Their studs' plump plums shriveled into withered prunes would be a dead giveaway. Impeccable specificity and discretion - tenebrous spermatogonia only! - are imperative. Rudimentary clandestine Top Secret/Lotus Eater subcontracts might be let to Quebec, Canada. If a deficient M. lewinskii got loose and wrought gonadal havoc, who would complain? Dr. Schund presents the quintessential endangered species brought back from the edge of extinction and amplified into something grand, valuable, and survivable. The flavor of tuna was rendered deficient when fishermen stopped grinding up adventitious dolphin as excipient. Guard our prerogatives! Microphallus lewinskii is a first step of a exhilarating adventure to put things right.