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What Do Slugs Eat? Food Preferences of Land Snails and How to Investigate Them

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2018

Abstract

Food preferences - favouring of specific food - could be observed among many animals, not only in vertebrates. Land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Stylommatophora) are one of such unexpected examples.

The Spanish Slug (Arion vulgaris (Moquin-Tandon, 1855)) is an appropriate model organism for a demonstration of food preferences. It is omnipresent, readily digests various types of offered food, and its school breeding is easy.

This paper presents the instructions how to (1) set up a food preference test focused on this invasive slug, (2) interpret obtained results, and (3) incorporate such project into everyday teaching. Thanks to presented laboratory practise, pupils will gain the knowledge about one of the worst agricultural pest and invasive organism living in the Czech Republic, its feeding habits and bionomics.