Meet our Study Species

****The following is another post from Wild Lens volunteer Virginia Schutte who has been studying snail populations in the mangrove ecosystems of the Panama coast. Click here to read all of Virginia’s blog posts.****

We’re looking at what happens to “indicator species” snails, so-called because they are easy to work with, but can indicate something about the health of an entire mangrove ecosystem. Part of our project compares the differences in what happens between these two snails and how often they are eaten by a larger snail.

Left photo: Cerithidea montagnei, a climbing snail. Right photo, from left to right: Cerithidea californica, a non-climber, and Thais kiosquiformis, the most common predator for our two Cerithidea snails in Pacific Panamanian mangrove forests.

This larger, Thais snail eats Cerithidea snails by drilling through their shells with a radula, which is like a tongue with a serrated edge that works like a saw to grind away a hole in a Cerithidea shell. We can see when Cerithidea has been eaten by Thais because this hole is distinct- in our study area, only Thais causes these holes. When they are eating, Thais looks like they’re kissing Cerithidea.

Thais (larger snail) using its radula (tongue saw) to drill into and then suck the innards out of a Cerithidea californica.