First, experiments were tested for a new method concerning analyses of crop contents in liquosomatophagous animals. Disc-electrophoretic separations of the crop contents of Helobdella stagnalis yielded protein patterns typical for the number of bands and for the relative mobilities in these Chironomid larvae, on which H. stagnalis were fed. Additionally, slowly migrating bands occurred in the s...

Laboratory-reared Lymnaea are capable of detecting and responding to the scent of a crayfish predator. The present investigation is a first attempt to characterize multiple stress-related behavioural responses resulting from predator detection and to depict the neurophysiological correlates of one of these illustrated behaviours. Snails respond to crayfish effluent (CE) by increasing the follow...

Lymnaea cousini Jousseaume, 1887 was collected in Mucubaji, Merida State, Venezuela, from a permanent pond located at a very high altitude (3760 m). Identification of the collected specimens was made by comparison with the original description of the shell by Jousseaume and the description of the renal organ and reproductive system of topotypic specimens by Paraense.

In this study, we operantly conditioned the aerial respiratory behaviour of the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Aerial respiration in Lymnaea stagnalis is accomplished by the spontaneous opening and closing of its respiratory orifice, the pneumostome, at the water surface. Weak tactile stimulation of the pneumostome area, when the pneumostome is open, evoked only the pneumostome closure res...

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are pentameric ligand-gated ion channels that belong to the Cys-loop receptor superfamily. These receptors are allosteric proteins that exist in different conformational states, including resting (closed), activated (open), and desensitized (closed) states. The acetylcholine binding protein (AChBP) is a structural homologue of the extracellular ligand-...

Pesticide use leads to complex exposure and response patterns in non-target aquatic species, so that the analysis of data from standard toxicity tests may result in unrealistic risk forecasts. Developing models that are able to capture such complexity from toxicity test data is thus a crucial issue for pesticide risk assessment. In this study, freshwater snails from two genetically differentiat...

The shadow-induced withdrawal response in Lymnaea stagnalis is mediated by dermal photoreceptors located on the foot, mantle cavity, and skin around the pneumostome area. Here, we determined whether we could obtain a neural correlate of the withdrawal response elicited by a shadow in a higher-order central neuron that mediates withdrawal behavior. We measured the electrophysiological properties...

We found strain differences in the ability of wild Alberta Lymnaea stagnalis to form long-term memory (LTM) following operant conditioning when L. stagnalis were collected from the wild and trained in the laboratory. Lymnaea stagnalis obtained from the Belly River watershed had an enhanced ability to form LTM compared with those from an isolated pond (referred to as Jackson snails). We therefor...

Respiration and the whole-body withdrawal are two incompatible behaviors in the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Whole-body withdrawal behavior is believed to be higher on the behavioral hierarchy than respiratory behavior. A central pattern generator (CPG) underlies respiratory behavior; whole-body withdrawal is mediated by a network of electrically coupled neurons. In this study, we provid...