peer reviewed / Surveys in stone yards in Wallonia (southern Belgium) led to the find of six taxa of land snails being new to Belgium and one being new to Wallonia. The new taxa can be divided into two groups: living animals of the European species Charpentieria itala, Laciniaria plicata, Chilostoma cingulatum, and Theba pisana, and shells with rem...
Published in Frontiers in Immunology
Disruptions to reproductive health in wildlife species inhabiting polluted environments is often found to occur alongside compromised immunity. However, research on impacts of aquatic pollution on freshwater mollusc immune responses is limited despite their importance as vectors of disease (Schistosomiasis) in humans, cattle and wild mammals. We de...
Published in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
Parasites threaten all free-living organisms, including molluscs. Understanding the evolution of immune defence traits in natural host populations is crucial for predicting their long-term performance under continuous infection risk. Adaptive trait evolution requires that traits are subject to selection (i.e. contribute to organismal fitness) and t...
Abstract The species of Pugilina cochlidium (Linnaeus, 1758) and P. erecta (Vermeij & Raben, 2009) has been studied in the present study. The female can be differentiated from the male by the absence of the cephalic penis and a complicated genital aparatus visible through the mantle skirt in both the sexes. In other aspects of the external features...
Published in Microorganisms
Aquaculture plays a major role in the coastal economy of the Mediterranean Sea. This raises the issue of the impact of fish cages on the surrounding environment. Here, we explore the impact of aquaculture on the composition of the digestive gland microbiome of a representative locally dwelling wild holobiont, the grazer gastropod Patella caerulea ,...
Abstract The species of Pugilina cochlidium (Linnaeus, 1758) and P. erecta (Vermeij & Raben, 2009) has been studied in the present study. The female can be differentiated from the male by the absence of the cephalic penis and a complicated genital aparatus visible through the mantle skirt in both the sexes. In other aspects of the external features...
Published in Frontiers in Marine Science
The need to understand species distribution- and biodiversity patterns in high-latitude marine regions is immediate as these marine environments are undergoing rapid environmental changes, including ocean warming and ocean acidification. By the year 2100, the seas north of the Greenland-Iceland-Faroe (GIF) topographic ridge are predicted to become ...
Se describió el desarrollo embrionario del molusco Physa cubensis (Pfeiffer, 1939). La colecta de huevos tuvo lugar en tres cuerpos de agua de la sabana de Bogotá, Colombia, durante el 2017 y el 2018, se buscó entre las hojas y tallos de macrófitas, además de palos y piedras. Se realizó un montaje total de 70 puestas de huevos y se evaluaron alrede...
Fragmentation strongly shapes the distribution of organisms within forest patches through contrasting environmental conditions between the edge and interior habitat. Edge-to-interior distribution patterns are, however, poorly studied for litter- and soil-dwelling fauna, such as terrestrial gastropods, despite their high densities and significant im...
Published in Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology
Artificial illumination increases around the globe and this has been found to affect many groups of organisms and ecosystems. By manipulating nocturnal illumination using one large experimental field site with 24 streetlights and one dark control, we assessed the impact of artificial illumination on slugs over a period of 4 years. The number of slu...
