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The majority of marine gastropods breathe through a single gill, supplied with oxygen by a current of water through the mantle cavity. This current is U-shaped, so that it also flushes waste products away from the anus , which is located above the animal's head, and would otherwise cause a problem with fouling.
P. acuta is a self-fertile snail that can undergo either sexual reproduction or self-fertilization. Noel et al. [12] experimentally tested whether accumulation of deleterious mutations is avoided either by inbreeding populations of the snail (undergoing self-fertilization), or in outbreeding populations undergoing sexual reproduction.
After snails hatch from the egg, they mature in one or more years. Maturity takes two years in Southern California, while it takes only 10 months in South Africa. [citation needed] In captivity snails can become sexually mature within 3.5 months of hatching, before they stop growing. [30] The lifespan of snails in the wild is typically 2–3 years.
Pulmonata or pulmonates is an informal group (previously an order, and before that, a subclass) of snails and slugs characterized by the ability to breathe air, by virtue of having a pallial lung instead of a gill, or gills. The group includes many land and freshwater families, and several marine families.
Other snails have adapted to an existence in ditches, near deepwater hydrothermal vents, in oceanic trenches 10,000 meters (6 miles) below the surface, [17] the pounding surf of rocky shores, caves, and many other diverse areas. Gastropods can be accidentally transferred from one habitat to another by other animals, e.g. by birds. [18]
Helicidae is a large, diverse family of western Palaearctic, medium to large-sized, air-breathing land snails, sometimes called the "typical snails."It includes some of the largest European land snails, several species are common in anthropogenic habitats, and some became invasive on other continents.
Cantareus apertus, [2] commonly known as the green garden snail, is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Helicidae, the typical snails. Distribution
Others may breathe atmospheric air while remaining submerged, via breathing tubes or trapped air bubbles, though some aquatic insects may remain submerged indefinitely and respire using a plastron. A number of insects have an aquatic juvenile phase and an adult phase on land. In these case adaptions for life in water are lost at the final ecdysis