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01 August 2003

Cellular Communication Determinants in Behavioral Ecology of Mud Snails

by James Farr

I have written two books in my life. One is entitled A Natural History of Long Island, New York. It was published by a Canadian press in 1993.

The other book was what is termed an Environmental Impact Statement. I was required as a Health Department employee to write an entire book on the ecology of a salt-marsh area recently impacted by an oil spill. The book was entitled The EIS of Mattiace Site, Glen Cove, N.Y. and still can be found in The Offices of the Nassau County Department of Health.

The study I was required to perform was to assess the environmental damage by the oil spill. Most of the oil had been cleaned off the shore. I wished to study the organisms most directly impacted within the economic means of the study. I picked mud snails. Mud snails Littorina littorina are common snails found in any bay bottom on Long Island. I chose my study site as a small mud embankment next to a large salt-marsh area which was relatively unimpacted. The oil had seeped rapidly into the mud affecting the mud snails. I was told by one of my professors that if the snail's foot or proboscis was protuding and sticking out and then re-entering the snail's shell, that meant the snails were going to recover. However if the foot just stuck out that entire population would die.

I found also a small artesian well there with spring water which was obviously helping the snails to breath. I decided to use eight old discarded bricks to build a transect vertically and horizontally. I would measure how well the snail's breathed farther or closer from the small artesian well.

The results surprised me. All of the bricks were covered with algae and mud themselves. I had found that the actual proximity of the artesian well to the snails was not important. It was the actual physical surroundings around each snail. The more algae on the stones, or the darker or cleaner the mud,the more the snails were recovering.

This is a real discovery. To see that cellular communication or any other type of simple physical effects on physiology and respiration can truly determine an animal's ability to survive.

The study gave me a real feeling about the importance of adaptive behavior and how animals could even evolve slowly through gradual nutritional change or substrate topology. My later research in crane-flies and Polychaete worms helped to confirm this approach towards gradualism in my interpretation of evolution.