Interested in Snails?
You should be!
There are several examples showing just how instrumental snails
are to the society:
--Dating back thousands of years, snails have been shown to be an important food source. Today, land snails are actually the chief ingredient in the French delicacy, Escargot. They are usually prepared carefully to ensure safety and with garlic (Kenney 2011).
--The phylum of terrestrial snails, Mollusca, is a large and diverse phylum that is actually very much understudied. At 42%, non-marine mollusks have the highest number of documented extinctions of any major taxonomic group (Lygeard 2004). The terrestrial and freshwater snails are at high risk in terms of vulnerability and extinctions. The classification of organisms into taxa is very important to the scientific world. It is especially important in determining whether a harmful species is invasive or whether to introduce an endangered species into a new area when considering food sources and predation (Perez & Minton 2008). Different species of land snails may be more sensitive to different pesticides or may have a choice food source that is actually the agricultural crop of that area.
--Since terrestrial snails are natural decomposers, they have a direct, positive effect on forest health and soil richness. Terrestrial snails, in general, are an important food source for birds, as birds use the shells as a source of calcium in their diet. They are also an important food source for several species of salamanders, mammals, such as shrews and mice, wild turkey, grouse, and a few songbirds ("Importance..." 2011). Terrestrial snails are essential to the ecosystem in which they live in ("Terrestrial. . ." 2011).
--Snails are often a common host of the Platyhelminthes class of Trematoda, otherwise known as the endoparasitic flukes. Often, these flukes are then transferred to humans causing diseases such as the one caused by Clonorchis sinensis, or the Oriental Liver fluke, which affects the bile duct and is common in the Orient (Hickman 2007).
To learn more about land snails in Wisconsin,
visit the
Wisconsin Land Snails page
through
the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.