Decollate Snail

Decollate Snail (Rumina decollata)

Taxonomy

Kingdom	Animalia
Phylum	Mollusca (mollusks)
Class	Gastropoda (gastropods)
Order	Stylommatophora (Air breathing snails + slugs)
Family	Subulinidae (Small, tropical snails)
Species	Rumina decollata

Land Snail Overview

All continents have land snails, they are especially prevalent everywhere in Eastern North America, where there are more than 500 native species. They live mostly in leaf litter of forests, old fields, and wetlands. They can also be found in more disturbed habitats such as active gardens and fields, river banks, suburbs, and even cities. The term ‘land snails’ includes snails and slugs, which have no obvious shell, they're shell is actually inside them. Most land snails feed upon a wide variety of organic material. But it is mainly consistent of green or dead herbaceous plants, rotting wood and fungi, bark and algae. They also consume empty snail shells, sap, animal scats and carcasses, and even rasp on limestone rock or cement [4].The radula (like in many mollusks,) has a rasping tongue as a mandible, they can use to ‘rasp’. It is full of horny teeth made of chitin and is used for scraping off particles of food from underneath [6]. Carnivorous snail species attack nematodes and other snails. Carnivorous snails are where the decollate snail lands on the feeding scale. Predators of land snails include invertebrates such as parasitic mites, nematodes, flies, beetle larvae, beetles and millipedes, and other snails like the decollate. Some other larger predators include salamanders, turtles, shrews, mice and other small mammals. Even birds, especially ground-foragers. Both shelled snails and slugs can generally be categorized as decomposers. [4]

References

1] AnimalBase :: Rumina decollata species homepage. (2013). . http://www.animalbase.uni-goettingen.de/zooweb/servlet/AnimalBase/home/species?id=1293.

2] Cadmium in soils and groundwater: A review - PMC. (2020). . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7147761/.

3] Decollate Snail / UC Statewide IPM Program (UC IPM). (n.d.). . https://ipm.ucanr.edu/natural-enemies/decollate-snail/.

4] Mollusks : Carnegie Museum of Natural History. (2005). . https://www.carnegiemnh.org/science/mollusks/landsnailecology.html.

5] snail eating snails. (n.d.). . https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/gastro/snail_eating_snails.htm.

6] Snails. Germanfactsheet.pdf. (n.d) https://agresearch.montana.edu/wtarc/producerinfo/entomology-insect-ecology/EasternHeathSnail/GermanFactSheet.pdf

7] Classification. (n.d.). . http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio210/f2012/ravenscr_patr/classification.htm.