A water-borne sex pheromone and trail following in the apple snail, Pomacea canaliculata

We investigated whether individuals of the apple snail Pomacea canaliculata were attracted by conspecifics or follow mucus trails of other individuals. The snails' behaviour was studied by a series of choice experiments in a T-maze and in Petri dishes. Both males and females chose the side with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of molluscan studies 2007-08, Vol.73 (3), p.275-278
Main Authors: Takeichi, Mari, Hirai, Yoshio, Yusa, Yoichi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Malus
Mollusca
Pomacea canaliculata
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Summary:We investigated whether individuals of the apple snail Pomacea canaliculata were attracted by conspecifics or follow mucus trails of other individuals. The snails' behaviour was studied by a series of choice experiments in a T-maze and in Petri dishes. Both males and females chose the side with a snail of the opposite sex significantly more frequently than the control side without a snail. Males were attracted by water conditioned with females more frequently than unconditioned water, whereas females did not show a preference for male-conditioned water. Moreover, juveniles were not attracted by water conditioned with a male, a female and a juvenile. These data indicate that males were attracted by female odour, which contains one or more water-borne sex pheromones. In addition, both males and females follow mucus trails of snails of the opposite sex. Since females also followed trails of females, the function of trail following is not necessarily related to reproduction. In these experiments P. canaliculata did not distinguish the direction of the trail.
ISSN:0260-1230
1464-3766
DOI:10.1093/mollus/eym027