Biomineralized tissues are widespread in animals. They are essential elements in skeletons and in statocysts. The function of both can only be understood with respect to gravitational force, which has always been present. Therefore, it is not astonishing to identify microgravity as a factor influencing biomineralization, normally resulting in the reduction of biomineralized materials. All known...

Shell shape and shell thickness of the intertidal snail Littorina obtusata changed markedly between 1871 and 1984 in northern New England. Shells collected prior to 1900 were high-spired with thin walls, whereas shells collected in 1982-84 were low-spired with thick walls. An intertidal crab (Carcinus maenas) which preys on L. obtusata expanded its range into northern New England around 1900. T...

The occurrence of trematodes within the gastropod Hydrobia ulvae was studied in two areas (a Zostera noltii bed and a eutrophic area) in the Mondego Estuary, Portugal. The aim was to assess trematode infections across snail age classes, as well as to investigate any influence of parasitism on the shell shape and size of these gastropods. In the Z. noltii bed, infection occurred in snails with s...

A new endemic land snail species of the family Discidae, Atlantica (Canaridiscus) saproxylophaga Alonso, G. Holyoak & Yanes 2011, was recently described from La Gomera, Canary Islands (in Yanes et al. 2011). According to Rähle & Allgaier (2011) it is provisorily considered as belonging to the genus Discus. This species lives in the laurel forest and has the largest shell of all the Discidae hit...

Sound production has evolved independently in many phyla over time (Senter, 2008). Many animals produce sounds for communication, either with congeners or in reaction to predators (for examples of the latter in invertebrates see Bura, Fleming & Yack, 2009; Olofsson, Jakobsson & Wiklund, 2012), but Vermeij (2010) noted that deliberate production of acoustic signals is entirely unknown in the phy...

Land snails are widely distributed animals whose clumped isotope (∆47) in shell carbonates can serve as a proxy for temperature terrestrial environments. However, it is unclear whether the ∆47 values of snail shells affected by biological processes known “vital effects.” Here, we report whole Achatina fulica cultured at different temperatures growth ages (samples collected monthly). In general,...

BACKGROUND Recent studies concerning species of land snails have revealed that the shell morphometrics can provide evidence of the differentiation among populations. In many cases, the morphologic analysis combined with the investigation of molecular variability, can support changes in taxonomy of studied groups. In this sense, the study of shell morphometry during snail development can contrib...

In an attempt to elucidate the role of calcium in the life of the edible Achatinid snail, Limicolaria flammea (Miller) I investigated short and long term effects of calcium added to the food. The short term experiments lasted for 18, 30 and 32 weeks respectively, while the long term experiment to determine life time utilization of calcium carbonate lasted for 15 months. In the short term experi...