7 October 2024
One of the crucial strangest issues we noticed at the WINGS Spain in Autumn excursion closing month had been many snail encrusted fenceposts and crops alongside the street. The snails had been in every single place within the dry scorching spaces of southern Spain. Why?
White lawn snails or Mediterranean snails (Theba pisana) are an safe to eat land snail local to the Mediterranean. We noticed them up on posts and crops as a result of we had been visiting throughout the recent dry season when the snails are aestivating to flee the warmth.
Finding Doñana describes their existence cycle:
Our land snails are basically nocturnal, since at evening the presence of predators decreases and the environmental prerequisites are extra conducive to them through considerably expanding the humidity of our environment. All the way through the favorable time of the yr, with delicate temperatures and ok environmental humidity, land snails feed within the herbaceous layer closest to the bottom, with the ability to stay lively for a just right a part of the day as neatly.
But if spring offers solution to summer season, temperature will increase and the humidity decreases, generating a really adverse atmosphere to them. …. To triumph over those negative prerequisites, which in most cases start in June, land snails input a state of dormancy … [called] aestivation.
The snails climb up the place the temperature is cooler above flooring. Then they shut their shells with a sticky secretion that clings to their selected plant or publish, leaving a tiny hollow for respiring. The snails fall asleep.
Their prime perch assists in keeping them protected from flooring predators however now not from birds that forestall through for a snack. Finding Doñana presentations pictures of a kestrel and a lark consuming snails on fenceposts.
The snails’ proclivity for mountaineering and latching on is how they’ve by chance traveled on global freight. Out of doors of the Mediterranean they grow to be an invasive agricultural pest. In Florida they’re thought to be “the worst attainable agricultural pest of the helicid snails.”
When the season adjustments and the elements turns into cooler and extra humid, the snails come down. For those who consult with southern Spain within the wintry weather you received’t see them.
Learn extra about white lawn snails of their local habitat at Finding Doñana: The lengthy nap of the snails on the quote hyperlink above.