The initial stimulus for establishing the Samoan Snail Project came from a field trip undertaken by Robert Cowie in 1992 with Steve Miller (United States Fish and Wildlife Service), Barry Smith (University of Guam) and Nora Rojeck (University of Hawaii), funded by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and with the purpose of evaluating the status of the partulid tree snails of American Samoa.

Tony Robinson, formerly of the [Western] Samoan Department of Lands, Surveys and Environment, provided further stimulation for documenting the fauna of the Samoan Islands, as did his successors, David Butler and Cedric Schuster. Many others have offered their support in various ways: Ray Tulafono (American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources), Don Vargo (American Samoa Community College), Chris Stein and Bob Cook (National Park of American Samoa), Brooks Harper (United States Fish and Wildlife Service), Bryan Harry (United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service), John Enright (Le Vaomatua), Rüdiger Bieler and John Slapcinsky (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago), and Cliff Smith (Cooperative Parks Studies Unit, University of Hawaii). We thank them all.

For assistance in the field in American Samoa we thank all those who have helped but most especially Bob Cook and Mino Fialua (National Park of American Samoa) and Falaniko Mika and Pasia Setu (American Samoa Community College, Land Grant Program).

The following people facilitated loans of specimens from the collections in their care and we are grateful to them all: Bob Hershler, Cheryl Bright, and Paul Greenhall (National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), Washington), Philippe Bouchet and Virginie Héros (Muséum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris), Trudi Meier (Zoologisches Museum der Universität Zürich), Edmund Jarzembowsky (Maidstone Museum), and Rüdiger Bieler (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago).

A draft of the field guide was tested by students and research staff of the American Samoa Community College, notably Falaniko Mika, Pasia Setu, and Nonu TiaSamoa, under the supervision of Don Vargo.

Substantial funding for the Samoan Snail Project has been provided by the National Science Foundation (grant number DEB 9705494) and the United States Department of the Interior (National Park Service) and facilitated by the United States Geological Survey (Biological Resources Division).

This field guide could not have been produced without first compiling the information in the Catalog of the nonmarine snails and slugs of the Samoan Islands. The assistance of all the people who helped in putting that work together is gratefully acknowledged. In addition we acknowledge the many authors of publications from which information for this field guide has been drawn but which could not be listed in the bibliography.

Some of the general introductory material and illustrations are drawn in part from the excellent field guide to the land snails of Britain and North-west Europe, authored by Mike Kerney and Robert Cameron and illustrated by Gordon Riley, with permission.