Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
Trophic flexibility is a relevant trait in the potential for organisms to establish widely, maintain high abundances and spread after invasion. Pomacea canaliculata is an apple snail that feeds primarily on aquatic macrophytes, although it also consumes other trophic resources that likely play an important role in its persistence and contribute to its effects in invaded wetlands. In the present study we determined the ingestion rates in P. canaliculata for carrion and subsequent effects on growth, and performed field and laboratory experiments to investigate the mechanism of carrion detection. We observed P. canaliculata snails of all sizes feeding on carrion. The specific ingestion rates of carrion decreased with snail size and were 20 times lower than when feeding on lettuce. The growth rates of snails feeding only on carrion were 1530 higher than those of fasting snails and 30 of those snails feeding on lettuce or lettuce and carrion. We found no evidence of distant chemoreception of carrion. The importance of carrion for P. canaliculata is mostly as an alternative resource when its preferred food is absent, and not as a complementary resource that could enhance growth. Nevertheless, the ability of P. canaliculata to profit from carrion may help explain its potential to establish widely and to have effects on aquatic vegetation.
Marine & Freshwater Research – CSIRO Publishing
Published: Jul 1, 2016
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.