Theba pisana is a gastropod land known by various names such as snail dune snail Chinese, hazelnuts and chupaeros. It sticks to the surfaces with the same mucus with which it closes the opening of the shell to avoid losing moisture and can spend a long time in a state of rest, waiting for better times. It belongs to the family helícidos and in dry season are often found numerous groups of white or longitudinally striped snails of brown tones, of variable color and medium or small size, attached to the stems of fennel.
Summary
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- 1 Location
- 2 Habitat
- 3 Subspecies
- 4 Description
- 5 Food
- 6 Curiosity
- 7 Sources
Location
It is very common in the Iberian Peninsula . It is typical of Western Europe, but has been introduced in various parts of the world (United States, Australia), where it can become a fearsome pest for agriculture.
Habitat
Road edges, scrub areas, wetlands, dunes, rivers, crops. From sea level to 600 meters of altitude. Sometimes he lives together with Cernuella virgata and Xerosecta cespitum.
Subspecies
- Theba pisana pisana, the typical species, distributed throughout western and southern Europe.
- Theba pisana arietina, an endemism of the Sierra de San Cristóbal, between the municipalities of Jerez de la Frontera and El Puerto de Santa María (province of Cádiz).
Description
The shell of Theba pisana is subglobose, its propeller is low and has 5.5 to 6 turns. It is medium in size, 12-15 mm in diameter (rarely up to 25 mm) and 9-12 mm in height (rarely 20 mm). [2] The navel is narrow and is almost completely closed by an expansion of the columella. The opening is crescent-shaped and the lip is sharp and not curved upwards. The shell surface has a fine crosslink.
The coloration is very variable; the background color of the shell is almost always ivory white (rarely pink) and often has several more or less dark brown narrow spiral bands, which can be continuous or dotted. Therefore, three basic phenotypes can be presented: without bands, with bands and with points.
Feeding
Their diet includes plants, fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms. Snails eat using their radula, a rough tongue to scrape off food, as if it were a file. This way of feeding provokes true works of art from nature, like the one that occurs with populations settled in orange trees. In this crop it attacks both the leaf and the orange itself. Due to its rough tongue, in each “bite”, it releases small strips of its food, and at its banquet, it leaves the leaf turned into a vegetable cobweb. Although it normally attacks small areas of them, on certain occasions, it is capable of transforming 150 mm sheets into a network of connections, the limits of its bites.
Curiosity
Hermaphrodite snail, that is, it has both sexes, needs another individual to mate, and curious, both can become fertilized.