Paleontologists discovered six new species in the East African Rift
Sometimes hidden clues beneath our feet can reveal intriguing stories about the impacts of environmental change.
Sometimes hidden clues beneath our feet can reveal intriguing stories about the impacts of environmental change.
Archaeology
Oct 30, 2018
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(Phys.org) -- When tropical marine cone snails sink their harpoon-like teeth into their prey, they inject paralyzing venoms made from a potent mix of more than 100 different neurotoxins.
Biotechnology
Apr 10, 2012
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A team of Catalan researchers has studied the changes in the make-up of animal populations following forest fires, and have concluded that malacological fauna are a good indicator of forest recovery. The conclusions of this ...
Ecology
Feb 16, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Large-sized gastropods (up to 7 cm) dating from only 1 million years after the greatest mass extinction of all time, the Permian-Triassic extinction, have been discovered by an international team including ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 10, 2010
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At a snail farm in lake-rich northern Poland, one of a growing number of breeders across the country, it is easy to accidentally step on a mollusc making a break for freedom.
Plants & Animals
Jun 12, 2013
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Research from the University of Southampton and National Oceanography, Southampton has provided new insight into the basic immune response and repair mechanisms of corals to disease and changing environmental conditions.
Ecology
Jul 6, 2012
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No one knows how they got there. But an invasion of African giant snails has southern Florida in a panic over potential crop damage, disease and general yuckiness surrounding the slimy gastropods.
Ecology
Feb 10, 2012
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A new minute freshwater snail species belonging to the genus Daphniola was found by a researcher from University of Athens (Canella Radea) in a spring covered by snow on Mt. Parnassos, central Greece. This study was published ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 1, 2011
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Some calcifiers (mussels, gastropods and corals) protect their shell or skeleton from the corrosive effects of increasing ocean acidification. They can therefore resist some of the damaging effects of increasing ocean acidity ...
Environment
Aug 29, 2011
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The Gastropoda or gastropods, more commonly known as snails and slugs, are a large taxonomic class within the phylum Mollusca. The class Gastropoda includes snails and slugs of all kinds and all sizes from microscopic to quite large. There are huge numbers of sea snails and sea slugs, as well as freshwater snails and freshwater limpets, and land snails and land slugs.
The class Gastropoda contains a vast total of named species, second only to the insects in overall number. The fossil history of this class goes all the way back to the Late Cambrian. There are 611 families of gastropods, of which 202 families are extinct, being found only in the fossil record.
Gastropoda (previously known as univalves and sometimes spelled Gasteropoda) are a major part of the phylum Mollusca and are the most highly diversified class in the phylum, with 60,000 to 80,000 living snail and slug species. The anatomy, behavior, feeding and reproductive adaptations of gastropods vary significantly from one clade or group to another. Therefore, it is difficult to state many generalities for all gastropods.
The class Gastropoda has an extraordinary diversification of habitats. Representatives live in gardens, in woodland, in deserts, and on mountains; in small ditches, great rivers and lakes; in estuaries, mudflats, the rocky intertidal, the sandy subtidal, in the abyssal depths of the oceans including the hydrothermal vents, and numerous other ecological niches, including parasitic ones.
Although the name "snail" can be, and often is, applied to all the members of this class, commonly this word means only those species with an external shell large enough that the soft parts can withdraw completely into it. Those gastropods without a shell, and those with only a very reduced or internal shell, are usually known as slugs.
The marine shelled species of gastropod include edible species such as abalone, conches, periwinkles, whelks, and numerous other sea snails that produce seashells which are coiled in the adult stage, even though in some cases the coiling may not be very visible, for example in cowries. There are also a number of families of species such as all the various limpets, where the shell is coiled only in the larval stage, and is a simple conical structure after that.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA