In a world first, scientists have filmed a rare carnivorous carníque that puts an egg of a “genital pore” on their neck.
The footage answers long -standing questions about how the mysterious mollusks, known as Snail Mount Augustus (Powelliphanta Augusta) – Reproduce.
“It is remarkable that in all the time we have spent taking care of the snails, this is the first time we see one to put an egg,” said Lisa Flanagan, a ranger from the New Zealand Conservation Department (DOC) who captured the footage, he said in a statement. “We captured the action when we were weighing the snail. We turned it so that we were weighed and saw the egg that barely began to leave the snail.”
In the video, a single pearl white egg oozes from the thin folds of the snail’s neck, from an opening known as genital pore.
There are at least 20 species and 59 subspecies of Powelliphanta snails, and are among the largest snails in the world, according to the DOC. Powelliphanta The snails are night and rarely come out during the day, except when it is particularly rainy. Therefore, they are often not very rarely seen by humans.
They are also among the most threatened invertebrate species in New Zealand due to predation and habitat loss.
According to the doctor, P. AugustaOnly is on the Buller plateau on the west coast of New Zealand, they are threatened by extinction due to open -smelted coal mining in its native range.
Due to its reduced population and night behavior, very little is known about the life cycle and the behavior of these creatures. Therefore, wildlife officials have been studying a population in captivity for almost 20 years.
“DOC has been managing this captive population in refrigerated containers in Hokitika since 2006, when the work began to extract most of its habitat on the west coast of the South Island,” DOC representatives said in a Facebook publication. “Very little was known about the species before being taken to captivity.”
Like many snails, Powelliphanta They are hermaphrodites, which means they have male and female reproductive organs. P. Augusta They are long life and slow to mature, they only reach the sexual maturity of the 8 years, which is very old for a snail. Mature snails usually lie around five eggs a year, which can take more than a year to hatch.
“Some of our captive snails are between 25 and 30 years old, in this they are polar opposites for the snail of the pest garden that we present to New Zealand, which is like a herb, with thousands of descendants every year and a short life,” said Kath Walker, DOC senior science advisor, in the statement.
While the hard shells of the snails help protect them from predation and hard conditions, they also make sperm from one snail to another difficult. “Powelliphanta I have resolved this by having an opening (a genital pore) on the right side of his body just below his head so that the snail only needs to get out of his shell to do the business, “Walker said.
“It extends his penis of this pore and in the pore of his partner, and his partner does the same, exchanging the sperm, which can store until each fertilizes the sperm they have received to create eggs,” Walker said.
He added that, because they have male and female reproductive organs, snails can also be fertilized.
Putting eggs through a genital pore is common among snail species, although some species, such as Saxatilis Littorina In the United Kingdom, he gives birth to live young people. But Powelliphanta The species are unusual because they only put an egg at the same time, instead of the large groups of Eggy produced by many other more common snail species, according to The Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
To save these exotic snails, the DOC has established new populations in nature by introducing them in new and rehabilitated habitats. However, they will continue to handle populations in captivity also until they trust that the species survives well in nature.
“The captive management of Powelliphanta Augusta Not only has it saved the species of extinction, but it has allowed us to learn more about the life of these incredible creatures that are nowhere else in the world, “according to the statement.
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