7 October 2024
One of many strangest issues we noticed on the WINGS Spain in Autumn tour final month have been many snail encrusted fenceposts and crops alongside the street. The snails have been in all places within the dry sizzling areas of southern Spain. Why?
White backyard snails or Mediterranean snails (Theba pisana) are an edible land snail native to the Mediterranean. We noticed them up on posts and crops as a result of we have been visiting through the sizzling dry season when the snails are aestivating to flee the warmth.
Discovering Doñana describes their life cycle:
Our land snails are primarily nocturnal, since at evening the presence of predators decreases and the environmental situations are extra conducive to them by considerably rising the humidity of the atmosphere. Through the favorable time of the 12 months, with gentle temperatures and ample environmental humidity, land snails feed within the herbaceous layer closest to the bottom, having the ability to stay lively for an excellent a part of the day as nicely.
However when spring provides option to summer season, temperature will increase and the humidity decreases, producing a very hostile atmosphere to them. …. To beat these unfavorable situations, which normally start in June, land snails enter a state of dormancy … [called] aestivation.
The snails climb up the place the temperature is cooler above floor. Then they shut their shells with a sticky secretion that adheres to their chosen plant or publish, leaving a tiny gap for respiration. The snails fall asleep.
Their excessive perch retains them secure from floor predators however not from birds that cease by for a snack. Discovering Doñana exhibits images of a kestrel and a lark consuming snails on fenceposts.
The snails’ proclivity for climbing and latching on is how they’ve by accident traveled on worldwide freight. Exterior of the Mediterranean they grow to be an invasive agricultural pest. In Florida they’re thought of “the worst potential agricultural pest of the helicid snails.”
When the season modifications and the climate turns into cooler and extra humid, the snails come down. In the event you go to southern Spain within the winter you received’t see them.
Learn extra about white backyard snails of their native habitat at Discovering Doñana: The lengthy nap of the snails.
