Left-coiling garden snail Jeremy, new research

This 2018 video says about itself:

Jeremy the Lefty Snail and Other Asymmetrical Animals

This is the fascinating story of Jeremy, the one-in-a-million snail whose shell coiled to the left rather than to the right.

From the University of Nottingham in England:

Two lefties make a right — if you are a one-in-a-million garden snail

June 3, 2020

A global campaign to help find a mate for a left-coiling snail called ‘Jeremy’ has enabled scientists to understand how mirror-image garden snails are formed.

The findings, published today in the journal Biology Letters, show that the rare left-spiralling shell of some garden snails is usually a development accident, rather than an inherited condition.

In October 2016, evolutionary geneticist Dr Angus Davison in the University of Nottingham’s School of Life Sciences appealed to the public for their help in match-making for Jeremy, a garden snail with a rare left-coiling shell.

Dr Davison hoped to use the offspring from Jeremy to study the genetics of this condition, because his previous work on snails had given insight into understanding body asymmetry in other animals, including humans. But another left-coiling snail had to be found first. As well as a mirror-imaged shell, Jeremy had genitals on the opposite side making it very difficult for the snail to mate with normal snails.

The science to unravel this mystery was made possible by the involvement of the general public in finding a mate for Jeremy, initially via an appeal put out on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, and then the wider media using #snaillove.

Jeremy became a global sensation and internet ‘shellebrity’. More than 1,000 news, radio, television and science articles, including the BBC and New York Times, highlighted the plight of the lovelorn snail. A graphic novel featuring the snail is now in development.

By bringing together a worldwide group of citizen scientists, and the snails that they had found, Dr Davison used the publicity to understand what makes an exceptional reversed-coiled snail such as Jeremy.

Altogether more than 40 lefty snails were found by citizen scientists, in the wild and from snail farms. Davison and the citizen scientists bred the lefty snails together to test whether their occurrence was due to an inherited condition. Over three years, nearly fifteen thousand eggs were hatched from four generations of snails, including Jeremy.

Initially, Jeremy had been left ‘shell-shocked’ after being given the cold shoulder by two suitors who seemed to prefer each other. Then, shortly before Jeremy’s death, one mate produced a batch of 56 babies, about one-third of which were likely to be ‘fathered’ by Jeremy.

The new evidence shows that rare lefty garden snails are not usually produced due to an inherited condition. Instead, they are mainly produced by a developmental accident.

This finding has relevance to understanding the common factors that define animal asymmetry, including humans, and the origin of rare reversed individuals in other animal groups.

Dr Davison said: “After a long search for a mate, and several mishaps along the way, Jeremy finally produced offspring, which delighted me — and the rest of the world. We were then able to use Jeremy’s offspring and the offspring from other lefties to discover how these mirror-imaged individuals are produced. Our findings showed that it is usually a developmental accident, rather than an inherited condition, that makes a lefty garden snail.

“We helped solve one of nature’s puzzles, which was very satisfying. There was also a happy ending for Jeremy, the snail, in finding love and producing offspring, albeit just before dying. None of this would have been possible without the public’s help.

“We have learned that two lefties usually make a right, at least if you are a garden snail. In other snails, being a lefty is an inherited condition, but we still don’t really know how they do it. If we are able to find out, then this may help us understand how the right and left side of other animal bodies are defined, including ourselves.

“You could say that we tried to recreate what made Jeremy different, but this was not possible. Jeremy was special.”

Arctic sea butterflies swim, video

This 19 May 2020 video says about itself:

How Sea Butterflies “Fly” in Water

Birds fly, and fish swim. We learn this when we are children. But not everything in nature is quite so simple… Meet Limacina helicina, an Arctic-dwelling sea butterfly that flies through the water.

Hosted by: Hank Green.

Deep-sea scaly-foot snails, new research

This September 2019 video says about itself:

The Deep-Sea Snail with an Iron Shell

Deep in the Indian Ocean, scientists have discovered a snail whose feet are covered in iron scales, but how it builds these scales is a bit of a mystery.

Hosted by: Olivia Gordon.

From the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology:

Genomic secrets of scaly-foot snail from hydrothermal vents

Laying the foundation for potential solutions provided by deep-sea creatures

April 28, 2020

Researchers have decoded for the first time the genome of Scaly-foot Snail, a rare snail inhabited in what scientists called ‘the origin of life’- deep-sea hydrothermal vents characterized with near-impossible living conditions. Unraveling the genome of this unique creature will not only shed light on how life evolved billions of years ago, but will also lay the foundation for the discovery of potential remedies offered by these ancient creatures.

Despite an extreme environment characterized by high pressure, high temperature, strong acidity and low oxygen level which resembles living condition in pre-historic time, hydrothermal vents harbor a diverse amount of creatures — most of which have huge potential for biomedical and other applications. Among other inhabitants of such difficult environment, Scaly-foot Snail, also known as “Sea Pangolin“, is of particular interest to marine scientists.

Scaly-foot Snail is the only extant gastropod (a major invertebrate animal, commonly known as snails and slugs) alive that possesses armor-like scales — an otherwise very common feature for gastropods during the Cambrian time over 540 million years ago. This snail is also the only organism in the world known to incorporate iron into its exoskeleton, and is also one of the top ten astounding marine species of the decade (2007-2017). Little is known, however, about its genome and unusual morphology, as the creature is extremely difficult to locate and collect.

Now, a research team led by Prof. QIAN Peiyuan, Chair Professor of HKUST’s Department of Ocean Science and Division of Life Science, managed to collect 20 scaly-foot snails at around 2,900 meters below sea level from the Indian Ocean in collaboration with researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), and analyze the snail’s genome sequence.

Contrary to many scientists’ expectation that the creature contains some new special genes that give rise to its bizarre morphology, the team actually discovered that all of the snail’s genes already existed in other mollusks such as squid and pearl oyster, and the snail’s gene sequence has remained almost unchanged throughout its evolution. The 25 transcription factors (a key protein that regulates many downstream gene expression levels) which contribute to the snail’s scale and shell formation, as the team identified, have also contributed to the formation of many other unique hard-parts in Mollusca — such as operculum in gastropods, beak in squid, spicule in chiton, or chaetae in polychaetes.

“Although no new gene was identified, our research offers valuable insight to the biomineralization — a process where the clustering, positioning and on and off switching of a combination of genes defines the morphology of a species,” Prof. Qian said. “Uncovering Scaly-foot Snail’s genome advances our knowledge in the genetic mechanism of mollusks, laying the genetic groundwork which paves the way for application. One possible direction is how their iron-coated shells withstand heavy blows, which can provide us insights on ways to make a more protective armor.”

The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

The study of genome sequencing of organisms often brings breakthrough to biomedical and other sectors. An enzyme of a microbe that lives in such vents — for example, was recently used for the detection of COVID-19 as well as other viruses such as AIDS and SARS.

New snail species named after Greta Thunberg

This 20 February 2020 video says about itself:

Greta Thunberg snail

A new to science species of land snail was discovered by a group of citizen scientists working together with scientists from Taxon Expeditions, a company that organizes scientific field trips for teams consisting of both scientists and laypeople. Having conducted a vote on how to name the species, the expedition participants and the local staff of the National Park together decided to name the mollusk Craspedotropis gretathunbergae. The species name honors the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg for her efforts to raise awareness about climate change. The study is published in the open access journal Biodiversity Data Journal.

This tiny snail was discovered in Kuala Belalong rainforest, Brunei in Borneo island.

Thunberg told she was “delighted” that the snail had been named after her.

Earlier, a newly discovered small Kenyan beetle species had been named after Ms Thunberg.

This video from Britain is called Beetle named after climate activist Greta Thunberg (1) (UK/Global) ITV & BBC News 25/26 October 2019.

Will Asian snails save Puerto Rican coffee?

This video is about the snail Bradybaena similaris.

From the University of Michigan in the USA:

Can a tiny invasive snail help save Latin American coffee?

January 23, 2020

While conducting fieldwork in Puerto Rico’s central mountainous region in 2016, University of Michigan ecologists noticed tiny trails of bright orange snail excrement on the undersurface of coffee leaves afflicted with coffee leaf rust, the crop’s most economically important pest.

Intrigued, they conducted field observations and laboratory experiments over the next several years and showed that the widespread invasive snail Bradybaena similaris, commonly known as the Asian tramp snail and normally a plant-eater, had shifted its diet to consume the fungal pathogen that causes coffee leaf rust, which has ravaged coffee plantations across Latin America in recent years.

Now the U-M researchers are exploring the possibility that B. similaris and other snails and slugs, which are part of a large class of animals called gastropods, could be used as a biological control to help rein in coffee leaf rust. But as ecologists, they are keenly aware of the many disastrous attempts at biological control of pests in the past.

“This is the first time that any gastropod has been described as consuming this pathogen, and this finding may potentially have implications for controlling it in Puerto Rico,” said U-M doctoral student Zachary Hajian-Forooshani, lead author of a paper published online Jan. 12 in the journal Ecology.

“But further work is needed to understand the potential tradeoffs B. similaris and other gastropods may provide to coffee agroecosystems, given our understanding of other elements within the system,” said Hajian-Forooshani, who is advised by U-M ecologist John Vandermeer, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Vandermeer and U-M ecologist Ivette Perfecto, a professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability, lead a team that has been monitoring coffee leaf rust and its community of natural enemies on 25 farms throughout Puerto Rico’s coffee-producing region.

Those natural enemies include fly larvae, mites, and a surprisingly diverse community of fungi living on coffee leaves, within or alongside the orange blotches that mark coffee leaf rust lesions. Hajian-Forooshani has been studying all of these natural enemies for his doctoral dissertation.

“Of all the natural enemies I have been studying, these gastropods in Puerto Rico most obviously and effectively clear the leaves of the coffee leaf rust fungal spores,” he said in an email from Puerto Rico.

Chief among those gastropods is B. similaris, originally from Southeast Asia and now one of the world’s most widely distributed invasive land snails. It has a light brown shell that is 12 to 16 millimeters (roughly one-half to two-thirds of an inch) across.

In their Ecology paper, Hajian-Forooshani, Vandermeer and Perfecto describe experiments in which a single infected coffee leaf and a single B. similaris snail were placed together inside dark containers. After 24 hours, the number of coffee leaf rust fungal spores on the leaves had been reduced by roughly 30%.

However, the snails were also responsible for a roughly 17% reduction in the number of lesions caused by another natural enemy of coffee leaf rust, the parasitic fungus Lecanicillium lecanii.

“With the data we are collecting now, we seek to find out if there are any apparent tradeoffs between these two consumers of the coffee leaf rust,” Hajian-Forooshani said. “For example, if the fungal parasite is especially efficient at reducing the rust, and the snail eats it along with the rust itself, that could be a tradeoff: promote the snail to control the rust and face the possibility that the snail eats too much of the other controlling factor.”

In their Ecology paper, the authors say they’re cognizant of “the many disastrous attempts at classical biological control” in the past.

One of the best-known examples of a biological backfire was the introduction of the cane toad into Australia in the mid-1930s to control a beetle that was destroying sugar cane. Long story short, the cane toad was completely ineffective at controlling the beetle and became a pest in its own right by multiplying dramatically in the absence of natural enemies.

So, it’s too soon to tell if the fungus-eating appetite of B. similaris and other snails could be harnessed in the fight against coffee leaf rust. One big unanswered question: Do the fungal spores remain viable after they pass through the guts of the snails?

“The gastropods seem to reduce the number of spores on the leaf, but it’s not clear if the spores can still germinate in the excrement,” Hajian-Forooshani said. “Also, we don’t know how the effect of the gastropods on coffee leaf rust scales up to impact the pathogen dynamics at the farm or regional scale.”

And the potential role of gastropods in the fight against coffee rust elsewhere in Latin America remains unknown. But the U-M researchers hope their findings in Puerto Rico will stimulate further research in other coffee-growing regions.

Swimming fresh water snail, video

This 25 July 2019 video shows a great pond snail swimming.

Martien van Beekveld in the Netherlands made this video.

Burgundy snails mating on video

This 18 June 2019 shows Burgundy snails mating.

Marianne Wever in the Netherlands made this video.

New snail species discovery in Panama

This 2011 video says about itself:

Snail Sleuth: Smithsonian Scientist Rachel Collin

Meet Rachel Collin, a staff scientist and director of the Bocas Del Toro Research Station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Rachel studies the evolution of marine gastropods (snails) and oversees multiple disciplines of marine biology at the Collin Lab in Bocas del Toro.

Now, however, about land snails.

From ScienceDaily:

Tiny thorn snail discovered in Panama’s backyard

November 6, 2018

Summary: Five years after one particular tiny thorn snail from Panama was identified as new to science, it is described in a scientific article. The official discovery only became possible after earlier this year glassy shells were collected from the La Amistad International Park, Chiriquí, Panama. Successfully recognized thanks to modern computed tomographic scans, the species adds to the few snails ever reported from the region, despite its indisputable biodiversity.

Discoveries of biodiversity at the Lilliputian scale are more tedious than it is for larger animals like elephants, for example. Furthermore, an analysis producing a DNA barcode — a taxonomic method using a short snippet of an organism’s DNA — is not enough to adequately identify it to the species level.

In the case of tiny thorn snails — appearing as minute white flecks grazing in moist, decomposing leaf litter — it is the shell that provides additional and reliable information needed to verify or question molecular assessment of these otherwise, nondescript critters.

However, at 2 mm, thorn snails are too small and fragile to handle and the few, if any, tangible details on the outside of the shells can only be seen using a high-powered microscope and computed tomographic (CT) images.

This is exactly how the interdisciplinary team of Dr Adrienne Jochum, Naturhistorisches Museum der Burgergemeinde Bern (NMBE) and University of Bern, Dr. Bernhard Ruthensteiner, Zoologische Staatssammlung Muenchen, Germany, Dr. Marian Kampschulte, University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg, Gunhild Martels, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Jeannette Kneubühler, NMBE and University of Bern, and Dr. Adrien Favre, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, managed to clarify the identity of a new Panamanian species. Their study is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

Even though the molecular analysis flagged what it was later to be named as the new to science species, Carychium panamaense, the examination left no shell for the description of the new snail to be completed, let alone to serve as tangible, voucher material in a museum collection available to future researchers. The mini forest compost-grazer had to wait for another five years and Dr. A. Favre, who collected fresh material while traveling in Panama.

The new snail is currently the second member of the family Carychiidae to be discovered in Panama. The first Panamanian, and southern-most member of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, is C. zarzaae, which was also described by Dr. A. Jochum and her team along with two sister species from North and Central America. The study was published in ZooKeys last year.

Much like X-rays showing the degree of damage in a broken bone, CT images visualise the degree of sinuosity of the potato chip-like wedge (lamella) along the spindle-like mast (columella) inside the thorn snail’s shell. These structures provide stability and surface area on which the snail exerts muscular traction while manoeuvring the unwieldy and pointed, signature thorn-like shell into tight nooks and crannies. The alignment and degree of waviness of the lamella on the columella is also used by malacologists (mollusc specialists) to differentiate the species.

Normally, a study of a thorn snail’s shell would require drilling out minute ‘windows’ in the shell by using a fine needle under a high microscope magnification.

“This miserable method requires much patience and dexterity and all too often, the shell springs open into oblivion or disintegrates into dust under pressure,” explains Dr. A. Jochum. “By exposing the delicate lamella using non-manipulative CT imaging, valuable shell material is conserved and unknown diversity in thorn snails becomes widely accessible for further study and subsequent conservation measures.”

The authors are hopeful that C. panamaense and C. zarzaae, which both inhabit the La Amistad International Park, Chiriquí, will remain a conservation priority along with other animalian treasures including the Resplendent Quetzal, Three-Wattled Bellbird and the Crested Eagles.

The park is considered the 1st bi-national biosphere reserve, as it occupies land in both Costa Rica and Panama, and constitutes a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.

Snail on hedgehog’s back, video

This 20 September 2018 video shows a snail on a hedgehog‘s back. Both are attracted to the food in the tray in the garden of Marieke Domburg in the Netherlands.

Ms Domburg made the video.

Antarctic crustaceans-sea snails relationship

This video says about itself:

10 September 2018

Pteropod mollusks such as Clione and Spongiobranchaea produce chemical compounds that are known to deter other organisms and prevend the pteropods from being eaten. This molecule is called pteroenone a ketone that deters many predators such as icefish.

Hyperiid amphipods are common prey of icefishes, other fish and seabirds of the Southern Ocean.

To protect themselves, some, called Hyperiella, have evolved the habit of abducting pteropods, and carrying them around on their back. It was shown that fish catching such a tandem, immediately release it.

From the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany:

‘Kidnapping’ in the Antarctic animal world?

A puzzling relationship between amphipods and pteropods

September 10, 2018

Pteropods or sea snails, also called sea angels, produce chemical deterrents to ward off predators, and some species of amphipods take advantage of this by carrying pteropods piggyback to gain protection from their voracious predators. There is no recognisable benefit for the pteropod. On the contrary they starve: captured between the amphipod’s legs they are unable to feed. Biologists working with Dr Charlotte Havermans at the Alfred Wegener Institute have investigated this phenomenon as part of a cooperation project with the University of Bremen. In an article in the journal Marine Biodiversity, they talk about kidnapping and explain the potential advantages of this association for both the host and its passenger.

Amphipods of the suborder Hyperiidea are popular prey for fish and sea birds. They play an important role in the Southern Ocean food web, which is why biologist Dr Charlotte Havermans is investigating the distribution, abundance and ecological role of various species of amphipods. To do so, she is taking samples on board the Research Vessel Polarstern from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). She works at the University of Bremen’s working group Marine Zoology. The project is funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) in the Priority Programme on Antarctic Research.

During a Polarstern expedition that took place in the austral summer from 2016 to February 2017, she made an extraordinary discovery: “A few of the amphipods carried something unusual on their backs. On closer inspection I realised that they were carrying pteropods piggyback,” reports the biologist. A literature search revealed that US researchers had already described this behaviour back in 1990 — although only for the high-Antarctic coastal waters and not for the open Southern Ocean where the ship was underway.

“We were wondering whether these tandems occur as frequently in the open ocean as in coastal waters — and whether both animals benefit from the relationship,” explains Charlotte Havermans. In the coastal areas of the McMurdo Sound, most of the amphipods studied carried a pteropod rucksack. Subsequent genetic and morphological investigations provided new insights. Previously, such tandems were completely unknown for the open, ice-free waters of Southern Ocean, and now the biologists have discovered this behaviour in two species: the amphipod species Hyperiella dilatata carried a type of pteropod known as Clione limacina antarctica, while the crustacean Hyperiella antarctica was associated with the pteropod Spongiobranchaea australis. Our sample size was too small to say without doubt whether these are species-specific pairs, where only a certain amphipod carries a certain pteropod species. During the expedition along the Polar Front to the eastern Weddell Sea, the AWI biologist’s team found only four such tandems.

The research team’s findings regarding the benefits for the animals are very exciting. Behavioural observations of the free-living pteropods show that cod icefishes and other predators are deterred by the chemicals the gastropods produce. When amphipods take pteropods “hostage”, they are not affected by their poison. Icefishes quickly learn that amphipods with rucksacks are not tasteful and so avoid those with a pteropod on their back.

Because the conditions in the open Southern Ocean are different to those in coastal ecosystems, several open questions remain: whether or not predatory squid and lanternfish, commonly found in the area, are also deterred by the chemicals has not yet been investigated. It is also still unclear to which extent the pteropod benefits from saving energy by being carried by its host. The researchers observed that the amphipod uses two pairs of legs to keep the gastropod on their back so that they are completely unable to actively hunt for suitable food where it is available. “On the basis of our current understanding, I would say that the amphipods kidnap the pteropods,” sums up Charlotte Havermans with a wink.

The biggest lesson the authors draw from their discovery: “We are probably overlooking numerous such associations between species, because they are no longer visible after net sampling.” Unlike shelled gastropods and crustaceans, which remain relatively intact, jellyfish and other delicate animals are crushed in the nets. “In the future we will hopefully be able to use suitable underwater technologies with high-definition cameras to investigate even the smallest life forms in their habitat. This will provide insights into the numerous exciting mysteries of interspecific interactions, which have so far remained hidden for biologists — but which undoubtedly play an important role in predator-prey relationships in the ocean.”

Amphipods of the species Gammarus roeselii guard their chosen mates, often carrying them with them for days and defending them against potential rivals. This behavior requires a lot of time and energy, so that the males make their choice with care. Scientists at Goethe University have now investigated under which circumstances males are prepared to revise their decision: here.

A study of crustacean parasites attaching themselves inside the branchial cavities (the gills) of their fish hosts was conducted in order to reveal potentially unrecognized diversity of the genus Elthusa in South Africa. While there had only been one known species from South Africa, a new article adds another three to the list, including one named after fictional character Xena because of the strong appearance of the females: here.