Assigning an Age to a Giant Snail – #365papers – 2017 – 135

#365papers for May 15, 2017

Fontenelle and Miranda, 2012, The use of outer lip in age estimation of Megalobulimus paranaguensis (Gastropoda, Pulmonata): Strombus, v 19, p. 15-22.

What’s it about?

Megalobulimus is a giant snail that lives in South America. Using the thickness of the outer lip of the shell (where the snail sticks out of its shell), it’s possible to estimate the age of the snail.

Why does it matter?

This can help ecologists estimate the age and population structure of snails in the wild without having to do a whole lot of capture/recapture studies. It’s also helpful if you have a dead snail to determine how old it was when it died.

Why did I read this?

I’m doing research that involves a couple of shells from Megalobulimus. It’s nice to have an estimate of how old the snail was so that I can make sense of the isotopic values we’re measuring from the shell.