The giant edible Placostylus snails of New Caledonia occur across a wide range of environmental conditions, from the dry southwest to the wetter central and northeastern regions. In large, slow-moving animals such as Placostylus, speciation could be assumed to be largely driven by allopatry and genetic drift as opposed to natural selection. We examined variation in shell morphology using geomet...

We collected six species of freshwater snails from Dominica, including Biomphalaria kuhniana (Clessin, 1883), Gundlachia radiata (Guilding, 1828), Helisoma (=Planorbella) trivolvis (Say, 1817), Melanoides tuberculata (Müller, 1774), Neritina punctulata Lamarck, 1816, and Physa marmorata Guilding, 1828. Our collections indicate that un-reported species such as G. radiata and H. trivolvis are est...

Oil spills represent a major environmental threat to coastal wetlands, which provide a variety of critical ecosystem services to humanity. The U.S. Gulf of Mexico is a hub of oil and gas exploration activities that historically have impacted intertidal habitats such as salt marsh. Following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we sampled the terrestrial arthropod community and marine invertebrat...

Three soil types with different physicochemical properties were selected to evaluate their effect on lead and cadmium bioavailability toxicity in the land snail Helix aspersa. In 28-day ecotoxicity tests, H. aspersa juveniles exposed increasing concentrations of Pb or Cd. EC50s, reducing growth by 50%, differed between soils so did Cd uptake snails. For lead, EC50s 2397–6357 mg Pb/kg dry soil, ...

Saline extracts of the albumin gland of snails from the genus Helix, Cepaea and Achatina show a remarkable capacity for inhibiting several serine-proteinases of animal, plant and bacterial origin. By the use of fibrin-agar-electrophoresis and fibrin-agar-immunelectrophoresis four polyvalent proteinase-iso-inhibitors could be separated, two of them probably directed against the active center of ...

Terrestrial snails choose their microhabitat according to a number of environmental factors. We evaluated the effect of light intensity and substratum complexity on microhabitat preference of the terrestrial snail Helix aspersa using a multi-factorial design. The snails were offered two levels of light intensity and two types of structural complexity, hence 16 treatments in total were used: 12 ...

Snails and slugs became a serious molluscan pests and damaging leaves of purple compacta, Cordyline fruticosa extensively grown for export at Green Farm Ltd, Sri Lanka. The export quality of leaves of C. fruticosa is lowered due to feeding of snails, Achantina fulica (Bowditch), Opeas pyrgula Schmacker and Boettgerx and Helix aspersa Muller and slugs incurring great loss to cut foliage industry...

The effect of clodinafop –propargyl against the mucus land snail, Helix aspersa, was studied under laboratory and field conditions during autumn 2020 season. Snails were exposed to serial concentrations clodinafop-propargyl for successive seven days using contact bait techniques. Median Lethal concentration (LC50) determined LC25 test compound examined on total protein alkaline phosphatase afte...

Brachylaima cribbi is a terrestrial trematode of birds and mammals with helicid and hygromiid land snails reported as first and second intermediate hosts. However, reports describing the first intermediate host range of B. cribbi have been limited to those snail species present in a small number of geographical locations in South Australia. The natural first intermediate host range, distributio...

The aim of this study was to determine the presence and prevalence of larval stages of Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Brachylaima sp. in the first intermediate host, a species of land snail, Helix aspersa, in Turkey. A total of 211 snails were collected in April-May 2014 from pastures in Mersin District. Larval stages of D. dendriticum were identified under a light microscope. Hepatopancreas from...