Land snails: Recorders of climate and weather changes

In a study published in Geophysical Research Letters on March 13, researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Northwest University showed that land snails are very sensitive ...

Austria's oldest preserved dyes detected in Miocene snail shells

Pigments in fossil snail shells from Austria dating back 12 million years are the oldest known preserved dyes from the polyene group, as scientists from the Natural History Museum Vienna and the University of Göttingen have ...

Newly-discovered 'margarita snails' from the Florida Keys

The "Margaritaville" in Jimmy Buffett's famous song isn't a real place, but it's long been associated with the Florida Keys. This string of tropical islands is home to the only living coral barrier reef in the continental ...

Uncommon wild bee thrives by nesting in old snail shells

McMaster biologists studying the local abundance of a typically uncommon wild native bee have found a clear link between the unusual population spike and the concentration of a non-native snail in the same area.

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Snail

The word snail is a common name for almost all members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the mid adult stage. When the word snail is used in a general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails.

Snails lacking a shell or having only a very small one are usually called slugs. Snails that have a broadly conical shell that is not coiled or appears not to be coiled are usually known as limpets.

Snails can be found in a wide range of environments from ditches, deserts, and the abyssal depths of the sea. Although most people are familiar with terrestrial snails, land snails are in the minority. Marine snails have much greater diversity and a greater biomass. The great majority of snail species are marine. Numerous kinds can be found in fresh water and even brackish water. Many snails are herbivorous, though a few land species and many marine species are omnivores or predatory carnivores.

Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata, while those with gills form a paraphyletic group, in other words, snails with gills are divided into a number of taxonomic groups that are not very closely related. Snails with lungs and with gills have diversified widely enough over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land, numerous species with a lung can be found in freshwater, and a few species with a lung can be found in the sea.

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