Everywhere we walk, especially in the dew-laden morning grasses, amber snails creep. Sometimes they creep into my garden, and I remove them.
Amber snails feed on plants, bacteria, fungi, algae and diatoms that live in wet or damp environments. Like other snails, they do not have jaws or teeth. Instead, snails feed with their radula – an elongated sac lined with thousands of tiny tooth-like projections. They use this organ to scrape and digest their food instead of chewing on it.
The soft-bodied land snails and slugs belong in the phylum Mollusca and class Gastropoda. This latter name comes from the Greek gaster or “belly” and podus or “foot.” To get where they are going, these animals slide about on their “belly-foot,” lubricated by a layer of slimy mucus they excrete as they travel. This substance, produced by glands in their muscular “foot,” leaves a silvery trail to show where snails and slugs have come and gone.
There are over 90 terrestrial gastropods in Maine, but the amber snail seems to be the most common now in midcoast Maine. As one might guess, it is named for the color of its delicate translucent shell. Other prominent features include two pairs of tentacles. The upper ones are eye stalks and can be withdrawn into their body. The lower, shorter tentacles are for smelling, and they are generally pointed at the ground to gather information about the snail’s surroundings or nearby food sources.
Amber snails, like many mollusks, are hermaphrodites. They generally start out life as males, and as they age they become females. Sometimes, as adolescents, they self-fertilize. Whether self-fertilized or having mated, they lay transparent eggs in sticky bunches on the undersides of stones, in the soil or on plants. Tiny snails hatch in about two weeks and mature within a year. During dry periods, they can estivate, or go dormant, until conditions become wetter again.
Snails are an important food for other forms of wildlife. Invertebrate predators of land snails include beetles and their larvae, millipedes, flies, mites, nematodes, and even other snails. Vertebrate predators of snails and slugs include shrews, mice, squirrels, and other small mammals; salamanders, toads and turtles; and birds, especially ground-foragers such as thrushes, grouse, blackbirds, and wild turkey.
So, while they might not engender great admiration, a modest nod of appreciation is perhaps due to the lowly amber snail.
Photo by Katja Schulz
