Land Snail Interactions
Figure1. Predation of a land snail
Land snails are important food source for animals such as frogs, salamanders, newts, turtles, mice, moles, shrews, squirrels, and birds (Burch, 1962). Although mostly aquatic snails are important intermediate host of parasitic trematode worms, some land snails (Cionella lubrica) serve as vectors of lancet liver flukes, or in the case of Zonitodes arboreus and Anguispira alternata, in the spread of lungworms in wild and domestic animals (Burch, 1962).
Terrestrial snails that have ingested soils containing the feces of vertebrate animals infected with trematode eggs serve as intermediate hosts when the trematode eggs develop into a trematode larvae inside of the snail and is then passed on back to the definite host, a vertebrate carnivore (Vera and Peake, 1979). Predation of a land snail is shown in figure 1.
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