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...

Author affi liations: Etablissement Français du Sang Alpes-Méditerranée, Marseille, France (P. Biagini, M. Touinssi, C. Picard, P. Gallian, J.-F. Cantaloube, P. de Micco); Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille (P. Biagini, M. Touinssi, P. Gallian, J.-F. Cantaloube, P. de Micco); Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Marseille (B. Dussol); Hôpital de la Conception, Assistance Publique de Marseill...

Bioactive products from snail slime of “Helix” specie have potential applications in preventing and/or treating several human diseases and in cancer diagnosis. However, the poor pharmacokinetics characteristics of these natural compounds limit their use. Nanotechnology offers promising solutions for the enhanced formulation of these molecules through the synthesis of nanosized drug del...

Intraspecific variation in the strength of inducible plant defenses plays a central role in the interactions between plants and herbivores. Studies of this variation are typically conducted in the greenhouse or laboratory rather than the field. We simultaneously manipulated densities of local consumers in the field within Maine and South Carolina populations of the smooth cordgrass Spartina alt...

Bioactive products from snail slime of “Helix” specie have potential applications in preventing and/or treating several human diseases and in cancer diagnosis. However, the poor pharmacokinetics characteristics of these natural compounds limit their use. Nanotechnology offers promising solutions for the enhanced formulation of these molecules through the synthesis of nanosized drug del...

bioactive products from snail slime of “helix” specie have potential applications in preventing and/or treating several human diseases and in cancer diagnosis. however, the poor pharmacokinetics characteristics of these natural compounds limit their use. nanotechnology offers promising solutions for the enhanced formulation of these molecules through the synthesis of nanosized drug delivery sys...

An ethanol vapor concentration of 1.6 mmol/l was used to test the diurnal variations of the olfactory response in two groups of snails, which were adapted to different light-dark cycles. The results revealed that the olfactory sensitivity to stimulation with ethanol was significantly increased during the day-time, which corresponds to the scotophase of the light-dark cycle, to which the animals...

BACKGROUND The mollusk statocyst is a mechanosensing organ detecting the animal's orientation with respect to gravity. This system has clear similarities to its vertebrate counterparts: a weight-lending mass, an epithelial layer containing small supporting cells and the large sensory hair cells, and an output eliciting compensatory body reflexes to perturbations. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING...

Parasitized individuals are often expected to be poor competitors because they are weakened by infections. Many trematode species, however, although extensively exploiting their mollusc hosts, also induce gigantism (increased host size) by diverting host resources towards growth instead of reproduction. In such systems, alternatively to reduced competitive ability due to negative effects of par...