Twisted sex allows mirror-image snails to mate face-to-face, research finds

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Life Science Weekly -- A study led by the University of Nottingham has found that differently-coiled types of Japanese land snails should in fact be considered a single species, because - against all odds - they are sometimes able to mate, a result which has implications for the classification of other snails.

Although most snails have a right-handed spiralling shell, rare ‘mirror-image’ individuals have a shell that coils to the left. This inherited condition has attracted attention because the genitals of so-called ‘lefty’ snails are on the opposite side of the head, and so it had been thought that normal ‘face-to-face’ mating is difficult or impossible.

But the new research by Dr Angus Davison, and Paul Richards, a PhD student in the University of Nottingham’s School of Life Sciences, published in the journal Evolution Letters, has revealed instances in a Japanese snail where the two types can overcome this seemingly insurmountable barrier - by twisting their genitals to allow them to mate in a face-to-face position. The study also found evidence of this in their genetic make-up

For many years, dextral (right-coiling) Euhadra aomoriensis and sinistral (left-coiling) Euhadra quaesita were believed to be two …

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(2017-12-05), Twisted sex allows mirror-image snails to mate face-to-face, research finds, Life Science Weekly, 1599, ISSN: 1552-2474, BUTTER® ID: 014786169