The ability of a certain genotype to express different phenotypes depending on variations in the environment is called phenotypic plasticity. Predator induced defences are among the most studied and wide spread examples of phenotypic plasticity. For example, in freshwaters, predators are constantly shaping communities with their presence and a plethora of defensive adaptations in prey have evol...

Sexual reproduction is both extremely costly and widespread relative to asexual reproduction, meaning that it must also confer profound advantages in order to persist. One theorized benefit of sex is that it facilitates the clearance of harmful mutations, which would accumulate more rapidly in the absence of recombination. The extent to which ineffective purifying selection and mutation accumul...

Under the Red Queen hypothesis, outcrossing can produce genetically variable progeny, which may be more resistant, on average, to locally adapted parasites. Mating with multiple partners may enhance this resistance by further increasing the genetic variation among offspring. We exposed Potamopyrgus antipodarum to the eggs of a sterilizing, trematode parasite and tested whether this altered mati...

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...

Although it is a major freshwater gastropod species, genetic diversity of Bellamya aeruginosa was completely unknown. Eighteen microsatellite loci were isolated and characterized from (AC)(15)-enriched genomic libraries of the freshwater snail B. aeruginosa. Most of the 18 loci were successfully amplified and high polymorphic information content values were found, ranging from 0.244 to 0....

Invertebrates and plants are among the most ubiquitous and abundant macroscopic organisms in aquatic ecosystems; they dominate most habitats in both diversity and biomass and play central roles in aquatic food webs. Plants regulate and create habitats for a wide array of organisms (Cooke et al. 2005). Snail grazing and bivalve filtering profoundly alter habitats and communities (Harvey and Hill...

Abstract The North American freshwater snail Physella acuta has invaded and colonized a wide range of habitats, globally. Resembling other invasive species, P. several negative impacts on the ecosystems, which calls for its regulation, preferably through biological control. malacophagous leech Glossiphonia weberi , native to West Bengal, India, had been previously reported as potential biocontr...

Global climate changes are affecting organisms and their interactions in terrestrial aquatic ecosystems, such as the increase temperature CO2 concentration. Herbivory interaction is a very important part of nutrient cycle energy flow freshwater ecosystem, may directly or indirectly affect plants, herbivores interactions. In this study, we explored effects rising temperature, elevated concentrat...

Ecological stoichiometry uses the mass balance of elements to predict energy and elemental fluxes across different levels of ecological organization. A specific prediction of ecological stoichiometry is the growth rate hypothesis (GRH), which states that organisms with faster growth or reproductive rates will require higher phosphorus content for nucleic acid and protein synthesis. Although par...

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...