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Published online 8 August 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1022
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Snails transmute to guard against danger
Changes in shell structure are induced by the presence of predators.
The general shape of an animal is written in its genes — but the humble snail can adapt its shell to defend against predators.
Paul Bourdeau, of the State University of New York in Stony Brook, has studied this phenotypic plasticity in the marine snail Nucella lamellosa, which — in the San Juan Islands, Washington — has only two main predators; the shell-crushing rock crab, Cancer productus, and Pisaster ochraceous, a starfish.
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What cues do the snails use to know which type of predator is present in their environment? Were the snails isolated in some way from the predators during their development, to be sure that it wasn't simply survival of the snails that would have grown the right type of shell, anyway?