Diversity of gastropods in Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, WA and the regional spread of the invasive European ear snail (Radix auricularia)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Environmental Sciences
- Keywords
- Radix auricularia, gastropods
- Copyright
- © 2014 Ponce et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Diversity of gastropods in Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, WA and the regional spread of the invasive European ear snail (Radix auricularia) PeerJ PrePrints 2:e555v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.555v1
Abstract
Establishing base-line knowledge of native snails in an area and their relative abundance is important in understanding the role of snails in their environment and the possible use of snails as a bioindicator. This information can also be used to determine how an invasive species is affecting the native populations over time. Six genera of gastropods were found in the wetland ponds of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge (TNWR) from April to June 2012, including the invasive European ear snail (Radix auricularia) which was found in four lakes it was not previously known to inhabit. A dominant snail genus was found for each lake, with Middle Pines Lake being dominated by Radix auricularia. Conductivity was the only abiotic factor studied that positively correlated with genera richness (p = 0.035).
Author Comment
This submission is under review at PeerJ.