Specialist species are more vulnerable to environmental change than generalist species. For species with ontogenetic niche shifts, specialization may occur at a particular life stage making those stages more susceptible to environmental change. In the salt marshes in the northeast U.S., accelerated sea level rise is shifting vegetation patterns from flood-intolerant species such as Spartina pat...

The use of snails as biocontrol agents against other snails and against aquatic weeds is reviewed, evaluating their success and their impacts on non-target organisms. The predatory snail Euglandina rosea (and other species), although widely used against Achatina fulica (the giant African land snail) on Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, has not been shown to control A. fulica but has seriously i...

Brachylaima cribbi is a terrestrial trematode of birds and mammals with helicid and hygromiid land snails reported as first and second intermediate hosts. However, reports describing the first intermediate host range of B. cribbi have been limited to those snail species present in a small number of geographical locations in South Australia. The natural first intermediate host range, distributio...

this guide to the identification of iranian freshwater snails has been prepared with aim of helping individuals involved in field work, but who have had no specialized training in taxonomy to differentiate snail specimens which they collect to certain groups by means of simple identification key. the guide pays special attention to the principal snail groups which transmit human schistosomiasis...

Lymnaea stagnalis were operantly conditioned to not perform aerial respiratory behaviour in a specific context (i.e. context-1). The memory for this learned response was reactivated 3 days later in context-1. During the 1 h reconsolidation period following memory reactivation, randomly picked snails were either maintained in context-1 or exposed to a new context (i.e. context-2). One hour later...

Social isolation is often considered to have negative effects on cognitive function in a wide range of species. Here we assess how environmental context alters the effect of isolation on long-term memory formation (24 h) in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. We operantly trained snails to reduce aerial respiration in hypoxia following exposure to one of three social conditions: (1) maintained an...

A strong molluscicidal effect of sanguinarine against Oncomelania hupensis snails was demonstrated by immersion test in the present study. A positive relationship between doses, immersion time and the mortality of the snails was exhibited, while the optimal dose and immersion time of application towards the field eradication of snails were suggested. The possible mechanisms of effects were expl...

Thin-layer chromatography was used to analyze the free-pool amino acids of the digestive gland-gonad complex (DGG) of Biomphalaria glabrata infected with Echinostoma caproni and uninfected (control) snails. Qualitative analysis revealed the presence of histidine, lysine, serine, alanine, valine, and isoleucine or leucine in all samples. Quantitative analysis of lysine and valine gave mean weigh...

limited studies have been made on the cercariae from freshwater snails in iran. this study was conducted to determine the cercariae fauna of bellamya (viviparus) bengalensis and evaluation of their zoonotic importance in khuzestan province, south-west of iran. for this purpose, 1143 bellamya snails were collected from ahoudasht region in central areas of the province during 2002-2003. bellamya ...

Overall 10389 snails were collected from four study areas of Punjab from November 2005 to October2006. The highest prevalence (38%) was found for Indoplanorbis followed by Physa (17%), Bellamaya(10.3%), Gyraulus (10%), Lymnaea (9.2%), Oncomelania (9%) and the lowest was found for Bulinus (6.7%).Only Indoplanorbis snails were found to be positive for Schistosoma bovis cercaria. Correlation betwe...