To the Editor: Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a zoonotic parasite that causes eosinophilic meningitis in humans after they ingest infective larvae in freshwater and terrestrial snails and slugs, paratenic hosts (such as freshwater fi sh, shrimps, frogs, and crabs), or contaminated vegetables. With the increase of income and living standards, and the pursuit of exotic and delicate foods, populat...

background: trematodes belonging to the genus schistosoma cause schistosomiasis. the relationship between schistosomes and their intermediate hosts varies among snails. this study investigated the effects of s. japonicum on its snail host, oncomelania hupensis, and cercarial release rythmicity of s. japonicum and the effects of light on it. methods: : seven groups of o. hupensis (n = 40 each) w...

Migratory animals endure high stress during long-distance travel in order to benefit from spatio-temporally fluctuating resources, including food and shelter or from colonization of unoccupied habitats. Along with some fishes and shrimps, nerite snails in tropical to temperate freshwater systems are examples of amphidromous animals that migrate upstream for growth and reproduction after a marin...

Host behavioral changes due to parasitism are often assumed to be adaptations of the parasite. However, behavioral effects of parasites may be a generalized response to parasitism and only coincidentally beneficial for parasite transmission. For this reason, alternatives to the manipulation hypothesis should be tested. Previous work demonstrated that the trematode parasite Microphallus sp. infl...

objective: lymnaea palustris was previously found in mazandaran province but there was not any report about its parasitologic aspects. this study was conducted to finding ecological and parasitological aspects of snail in mazandaran province, north of iran. materials and methods: in this descriptive study, more than 181 locations, were checked, in 36 locations, colonies of the snail were found...

Nutritional and organoleptic properties of the African giant land snails (Archachatina marginata) were investigated using 96 healthy-looking growing snails maintained on broiler starter mash (BSM) as control, Talinium triangulare or waterleaf, Centrosema molle or centro leaves, and Carica papaya or pawpaw leaves for 16 weeks. This study was set up as a completely randomized design (CRD) with th...

The identification of snails of the genus Biomphalaria can be done using morphological characteristics which depends on the size of the snails and skill and knowledge of researcher. These methods sometimes are not adequate for identification of species. The PCR-RFLP, using the ITS region of the rDNA, has been used to identify Brazilian species of the genus Biomphalaria. Nevertheless, there is a...

Snail borne infections are of significant importance in livestock production in India especially in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Snails Lymnaea acuminata and Indoplanorbis exustus live in muddy vicinity and standing water and act as the intermediate hosts of the parasitic disease fascioliasis in the livestock. This disease is responsible for significant economic losses due to negative effects to anim...

By having phenotypically plastic traits, many organisms optimize their fitness in response to fluctuating threats. Freshwater snails with translucent shells, e.g. snails from the Radix genus, differ considerably in their mantle pigmentation patterns, with snails from the same water body ranging from being completely dark pigmented to having only a few dark patterns. These pigmentation differenc...

Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis has been widely used as a model for gaining an understanding of the molecular and behavioral mechanisms underlying learning and memory. At the behavioral level, however, it is still unclear how taste discrimination and CTA interact. We thus examined how CTA to one taste affected the feeding response induced by another appetiti...