Pomacea americanista: almost one hundred years of unawareness

SORIA, A. L. ; BURELA, S.; SEUFFERT, M. E.; GUROVICH, F. M.; MARTÍN, P. R.

TENTACLE. The Newsletter of the IUCN/SSC Mollusc Specialist Group

University of Hawaii

Lugar: Hawaii; Año: 2024 vol. 32 p. 13 - 16

0958-5079

Apple snails (family Ampullariidae), especially those belonging to the genus Pomacea, are usually seen as troublesome invaders and agricultural pests rather than targets for conservation studies and projects (Martín et al.,2013). Pomacea americanista (Ihering, 1919) was first described as Ampullaria americanista from the Iguazú Falls (Argentina) and Encarnación (Paraguay) but almost a hundred years passed before the first studies of its ecology and natural history were published (Gurovich et al., 2017, 2018). This freshwater snail has a large shell, with a short spire and wide last whorl and an aperture that is closed by a corneous operculum. The shell’s external surface is smooth, with brown spiral bands. It shows sexual dimorphism with the males being smaller, with a convex operculum and the edge of the aperture expanded. Egg laying is aerial with hundreds of pale pink calcareous eggs that are laid on substrates emerging from the water.