White-lipped snail
Encyclopedia
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of air-breathing land snail
Snail
Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...
, a terrestrial
Terrestrial animal
Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land , as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water , or amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats...
pulmonate gastropod mollusc. It is a close relative of the grove snail
Grove snail
The grove snail or brown-lipped snail is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc...
also known as the brown-lipped snail.
Shell description
The white-lipped snailSnail
Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...
is very slightly smaller than the grove snail, the shell being usually about 2.5 cm (1 in) in maximum dimension. Like the grove snail, it has considerable variability in shell
Gastropod shell
The gastropod shell is a shell which is part of the body of a gastropod or snail, one kind of mollusc. The gastropod shell is an external skeleton or exoskeleton, which serves not only for muscle attachment, but also for protection from predators and from mechanical damage...
colour and banding, although the shell of the white-lipped snail is perhaps most commonly yellow, with or without brown banding. The principal distinguishing feature of this species is a white lip at the aperture
Aperture (mollusc)
The aperture is an opening in certain kinds of mollusc shells: it is the main opening of the shell, where part of the body of the animal emerges for locomotion, feeding, etc....
of the shell in adult specimens, although very rarely the brown-lipped grove snail can have a white lip, and vice versa.
Distribution
The native distribution of this species is Western EuropeWestern Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
and Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
. The range of the white-lipped snail extends closer to the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
in Northern Europe than the range of the grove snail. The white-lipped snail has been introduced to northeastern parts of the USA, but has not established itself as successfully as the grove snail
Grove snail
The grove snail or brown-lipped snail is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc...
.
Habitat
The two species share many of the same habitats, such as woods, dunes and grassland, but the white-lipped snail tolerates wetter and colder areas than the grove snail can.Life cycle
This species of snail creates and uses love dartLove dart
A love dart is a hard, long, sharp, calcareous or chitinous dart which some hermaphroditic land snails and slugs create. Love darts are made in sexually mature animals only, and are used as part of the sequence of events during courtship, before actual mating takes place...
s during mating.
The size of the egg is 2 mm.