Publisher's Synopsis
What is the place of freshwater snails in modern culture, if any? Does their alleged rarity and undeniable strangeness elicit conservation concern in small circles of the environmentally conscious? Might even smaller circles of professionals in tropical medicine and health worry about their potential to host parasitic diseases? And aren't some freshwater snails invasive? Or maybe they're just cute pets?Collected in the present volume are 36 essays, originally published in the genre-defining artistic universe known as the FWGNA Blog, exploring freshwater gastropod biology in the modern mileau. Our focus is on the larger prosobranchs - the viviparids and the ampullariid "mystery snails" - as well as on the familiar pulmonate snails of the hobbyist aquarium and the lab bench. Reproductive allocation and the species concept, especially as applied to asexually-reproducing populations, emerge as primary themes, together with the omnipresent phenomenon of phenotypic plasticity. And along the way we'll check in with Gary, a pet mystery snail, who doesn't smell so good. The essays collected here will be an essential companion both to the Volume 1 results of the FWGNA surveys of Atlantic drainages published in 2019, and to the results of the Volume 5 Ohio drainage surveys published in 2023.
