Two experiments using garden snails (Helix aspersa) showed conditioned inhibition using both retardation and summation tests. Conditioned inhibition is a procedure by which a stimulus becomes a predictor of the absence of a relevant event--the unconditioned stimulus (US). Typically, conditioned inhibition consists of pairings between an initially neutral conditioned stimulus, CS(2), and an effe...

The vestibular system receives a permanent influence from gravity and reflexively controls equilibrium. If we assume gravity has remained constant during the species' evolution, will its sensory system adapt to abrupt loss of that force? We address this question in the land snail Helix lucorum exposed to 30 days of near weightlessness aboard the Bion-M1 satellite, and studied geotactic behavior...

background: infection with ornithobilharzia turkestanicum has been reported in a wide ran ge of animals worldwide. this study was undertaken to assess the util-ity of polymerase chain reaction (pcr), for detecting the infection with o . turke-stanicum larvae stages in lymnaea gedrosiana . methods: a total of 6,759 lymnaeidae snails were collected from six aquatic habitats in west azarbaijan, no...

The tropics have faced massive biodiversity loss due to intensive anthropogenic activities such as changes in land use and degradation of environment. Recent reports suggest that the tropics are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate (Sodhi 2008). Much of this biodiversity loss has been reported for vertebrates and plants. However, there is very little knowledge on the extent of loss in lesser...

The tsunami and non-tsunami affected areas of Takua Pa District, Phang-Nga Province were investigated for fresh- and brackish-water snails that transmit human parasitic diseases during 2006 and 2007. Among 46 snail species found, 17 species of 8 families were freshwater snails, 28 species of another 7 families were brackish-water snails, and 1 species was a land snail. Of these species, 11 fres...

When a snail withdraws into its shell the only parts of the body left exposed to the air are a number of fleshy extensions of the mantle; the so-called mantle collar. This area of the body is a potentially serious source of water loss in the inactive terrestrial snail. The evaporation of water from active specimens of the common garden snail, Helix aspersa, is nearly identical to that from a fr...

The article considers and studies the need to find develop new sources of protein, as well biologically active substances, methods their production processing, used both for obtaining livestock products in other areas human economic activity. One most promising is snail farming, represented by edible species land snails. This covers development a method type raw material from Helix pomatia (gra...

BACKGROUND The present study was carried out to detect the infection of larval stages of Trichobilharzia species in the snail Lymnaea auricularia in northwestern Iran based on DNA analysis. METHODS A total number of 320 snails of L. auricularia were sampled from four water-bodies located in the suburb of Urmia City, North West Iran, during May to November 2011. The snails were first microscop...

there are many freshwater snails involved in the life cycle of parasitic flukes. some of these animals, such as bulinus spp and lymnaea spp are very important in public health and veterinary medicine. for example, bulinus trucatus and lymnaeid snails transmit human bilharziosis and zoonotic fascioliosis, respectively. for this reason most freshwater bodies of northern iran, were searched for po...

Foraging behavior of snails is affected by competition and risk of predation, which can be detected by chemical cues in the water. Freshwater snails are able to detect and respond to kairomones, from predators, and chemical cues, such as alarm cues, from other snails. Invasive species, such as the Chinese mystery snail, are known to affect native species through processes such as competition an...