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New participants are welcome; please feel free to participate! WikiProject Gastropods is a group of people who are working on creating and improving Wikipedia articles about gastropods, i.e. snails and slugs of every kind: those that live in saltwater, brackish water, freshwater, and on land.
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- Overview
- Size range and diversity of structure
- Distribution and abundance
gastropod, any member of more than 65,000 animal species belonging to the class Gastropoda, the largest group in the phylum Mollusca. The class is made up of the snails, which have a shell into which the animal can generally withdraw, and the slugs, which are snails whose shells have been reduced to an internal fragment or completely lost in the course of evolution.
Gastropods are among the few groups of animals to have become successful in all three major habitats: the ocean, fresh waters, and land. A few gastropod types (such as conch, abalone, limpets, and whelks) are used as food, and several different species may be used in the preparation of escargot. Very few gastropod species transmit animal diseases; however, the flukes that cause human schistosomiasis use gastropods as intermediate hosts. The shells of some species are used as ornaments or in making jewelry. Some gastropods are scavengers, feeding on dead plant or animal matter; others are predators; some are herbivores, feeding on algae or plant material; and a few species are external or internal parasites of other invertebrates.
Some adult marine snails (Homalogyra) and forest-litter snails (Stenopylis, Punctum) are less than one millimetre (0.04 inch) in diameter. At the other extreme, the largest land snail, the African Achatina achatina, forms a shell that is almost 20 centimetres (eight inches) long. The largest freshwater snails, Pomacea from South America, reach nearly 10 centimetres in diameter, and the largest marine snail, the Australian Syrinx aruanus, occasionally grows to more than 0.6 metre (two feet). The longest snail probably is Parenteroxenos doglieli, which lives as a parasite in the body cavity of a sea cucumber: it grows to be almost 130 centimetres (50 inches) in length, although it is only 0.5 centimetre (0.2 inch) in diameter. Most snails are much smaller; probably 90 percent of all adult snails are less than one inch in maximum dimension.
Snails show a tremendous variety of shapes, based primarily upon the logarithmic spiral. They can be coiled flatly in one plane, as in Planorbis; become globose with the whorls increasing rapidly in size, as in Pomacea; have the whorls become elongate and rapidly larger, as in Conus and Scaphella; have a few flatly coiled whorls that massively increase in width, as in Haliotis; become elongated and spike-shaped, as in Turritella; or be humped to form a limpet shape, as in Fissurella. Often a number of such shell shapes can be found among species within a single family, but such marine families as the Terebridae, Conidae, and Cypraeidae are conservative in shape. Shells of different species vary markedly in thickness, and those of many species bear conspicuous spines and ridges, probably as an evolutionary adaptation to predation.
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Of the more than 65,000 species, about 30,000 are marine, 5,000 live in fresh water, and 30,000 live on land. In general, oceanic gastropods are most diverse in number of species and in variety of shell structures in tropical waters; several hundred species (each represented by a small number of individuals) can be found in a single coral reef habitat. This is in contrast to the Arctic or subarctic coasts, where the few species present are represented by many individuals. A number of deep-sea species are known, and a significant snail fauna is associated with hydrothermal vents. Most marine species have large ranges.
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Freshwater snails are common in ponds, streams, marshes, and lakes. Usually only a few species are found at one place, but each species will have a rather wide range. Most species are common and feed on algae or dead plant matter. In a few relatively old river systems and lakes—in particular, Lake Baikal in Siberia, Lake Titicaca in South America, Lake Ohrid on the North Macedonia–Albania border, the Mekong basin in Southeast Asia, and the African Rift lakes—extensive and complex radiations of snails have occurred in recent geologic time, producing a large number of species.
Land snails are marginally, but very successfully, terrestrial. When actively moving, they continuously lose water. During periods when water is unavailable, they retreat into their shells and remain inactive until conditions improve. They hibernate during winter periods, when water is locked into snow or ice, and estivate during periods of summer drought. Land snails have been found above the snow line; species of Vitrina crawl on snowbanks in Alpine meadows. Other species inhabit barren deserts where they must remain inactive for years between rains.
Fewer than 10 species live in the same area together across most of North America. On the other hand, in such favourable areas as New Zealand, Jamaica, northeastern India, and the wet forests of Queensland (Australia) 30 to 40 different species can be found together. In some parts of western Europe 20 species can be found together. Only one or two species are found in many desert regions, and they have dramatic feeding specializations.
Gastropods, or univalves, are the largest and most successful class of molluscs. 60,000–75,000 known living species belong to it. Most of are marine, but many live in freshwater or on land. Their fossil record goes back to the later Cambrian .
