Dissertation Idea

[alexsaunders1991]

Hey guys,

I am in my second year of uni and have been looking ahead to my final year and to my dissertation. I am going to see how UVB may increase growth and see whether it would increase behaviours expressed and also could increase mating behaviours in Giant African land Snails. Has anyone got any ideas on how to do this, I have my own ideas but would like to see what other people think and different methods that could be used,

Many Thanks,

Alex

[coyote]

Hi Alex, welcome to the forum. Your topic sounds quite interesting and we would love to hear what your conclusions are. Being in the US, I have no direct experience with GALS, so I hope others will chime in with their thoughts on the subject.

[ness]

I would think you would need three tanks, all identical, all with the same level of heat, the same food - all factors as identical as you can get it.

One would be the 'control' tank, which would be placed on a counter-top in normal light levels, in a room with a window that lets in normal light, but not to place the tank in direct sun-light.

Next to this two other tanks. One with a UV lamp fitted. This would be best if it was designed for fish tanks and placed in the tank, but with a mesh guard around so that the snail cannot directly touch it. If you placed it outside the tank much of the UV would be filtered out by the glass (or so I'm led to believe but please check that out - I could be wrong).

The third tank would have a cardboard cover over all of the tank to block out the light, thus keeping the snails in darkness for the majority of the time.

Health and growth checks would then be made, for example weighing all of the snails and recording their weight twice per week, checking to see how much food is eaten, and checking for egg production. On top of this behavioural observations would be made, such as activity levels, going towards or away from any light areas of the tank, or noting the ability of the snails to distinguish day from night by their activity cycles (would this alter in the dark tank? - would it be more pronounced in the uv tank?).

Please be prepaired to terminate the experiment and return their conditions to normal if you feel that their health may be suffering as a result of permanent darkness or the UV exposure.

Something to watch out for with the UV tank would be snails trying to hide in corners, sealing themselves into their shells or burying under substrate to escape the light. If they are trying to get away please consider removing the uv lamp. Perhaps you could place a hide in each tank to give the snails a choice of going out into the light or not? It may even add to your data perhaps?

At the end of the day I wouldn't want any harm to come to them, but I don't think they would be harmed in such an experiment if it was carefully monitored and the uv light was on only for part of the day.

Water snails a re regularly kept in fish tanks where there is a uv lamp, so I would think that it wouldn't harm the snails, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious..

[alexsaunders1991]

Ness that sound very interesting, how many snails would you house in each tank? I was thinking 10 each, because 30 would be a good sample size

[muddydragon]

hi,
do you have a supervisor already? if not i would suggest speaking to members of the department to see if you can get an appropriate supervisor (some supervisors are less flexible than others for final year projects). sounds like a great project idea.
however do you have time restrictions (it's a 5 week project here) if it is a short time you might want to consider setting up the experiment a couple of weeks/months early so different effects can be seen later when UV may have had more of an effect. (i don't know about uv personally are there any papers on the time it may take to utilise UV products?)

you want to make sure you maintain other factors aswell such as temperature and humidity - the former could be affected in the tanks by the uv bulb and sunlight heating the tanks. it may be worth noting if the bulb emits any other light forms other than uv incase this may have an effect. if possible i would suggest getting related snails - to reduce the chances of large differences in genetic control of behaviour/utilisation of light. (i wonder if wild fulica would have different responces than captive bred fulica which likely will have adapted to their glass enclosed lifestyle)

10 in each sounds good but remember that noting the behaviour may become a problem (if you hve time maybe do a few pilot studies?) make sure the tanks are of equal size aswell since crowding may have an effect. - this is something to discuss with your supervisor they may have a better idea of whats possible in the time available.

please let us know how it goes.
good luck!