A. iredalei - Will the spots/markings remain?

[SojMad]

One of my Achatina iredalei has just given birth to the biggest litter so far, 37 babies!! When i picked them all up, I noticed that 12 of the babies has markings on their shell, dark spots and stripes. Will those disappear as they grow, or will they remain? I've never seen this on any previous babies, so I am pretty excited. I would guess that they'll disappear as the babies grow, but it's still very interesting. ;D What do you guys think, will they disappear?

37 babies:


And the 12 speckled ones:




How their "normal" siblings look like:


Comparison:


One of the speckled babies:


How often does this occur? Why?

Thank you for your time!

[coyote]

Ooh, such cute little snails. I don't know why the markings have occurred with your batch of babies, but I do know that markings can change very drastically as a snail grows into adulthood. Sometimes there is no resemblance at all between the hatchling and the adult, so anything can happen.

Please keep us advised of their development as they grow. It would be nice to see progress pics along the way.

[SojMad]

Yes, I also know that markings can (will) change very much, but A. iredalei aren't supposed to have any markings at all. They are supposed to be plain yellow. So I got very surprised when I saw these twelve babies.

It's gonna be interesting to see if these babies will look just as they are "supposed" to look when they grow, or if they will look different from what's normal.

[strangemouse]

Are the markings on the shells? It to me like it could be soil inside the gut showing through the shell.

Just a thought!

Victoria

[SojMad]

Oct 21, 2011 23:16:50 GMT strangemouse said:

Are the markings on the shells? It to me like it could be soil inside the gut showing through the shell.

Just a thought!

Victoria

Hi Victoria.
Yes, the markings are definitely on the shell. On these pictures they are also absolutely newborns, and haven't had any time to eat.

The markings are still there, but they are still very young of course and haven't had time to grow especially much. I can take some new pics of them in a couple of days.

/ Moa

[SnailsPace]

Some of my jadatzi and rodatzi had markings like that, they do disappear as they get older though

[wolf]

Hi,
I do not know anything about iredalei, so I only talk about A. fulica "jadatzi" and f. rodatzi.
In normal A. fulica fulica and Achatina fulica f. rodatzi there are dark spots on the surface of the mantle (not in the shell substance!), but they are only visible as long as the shell is rather thin, because they shine through the shell. When the shell becomes increasingly thicker, the spots seem to vanish, but they are only covered by the shell. May be in adult specimens the spots can disappear, I do not know that yet.
In so called "White Jade" and in "jadatzi" the soft tissue of the mantle surface is not capable of producing pigments, so they lack the dark spots of rodatzi visible at the beginning.
The dark spots on the mantle should not be confused with the dark stripes of normal A. fulica and A. fulica "White Jade", which are definitively pigments in the shell.
So it is possible (just a guess......) that the dark markings of the "speckled babies" shown above are not on the shell, but in the soft tissue of the mantle, as they are in A. fulica. Perhaps someone should look for an answer...... .
Kind regards: wolf

[SojMad]

Oct 22, 2011 10:38:19 GMT wolf said:

Hi,
I do not know anything about iredalei, so I only talk about A. fulica "jadatzi" and f. rodatzi.
In normal A. fulica fulica and Achatina fulica f. rodatzi there are dark spots on the surface of the mantle (not in the shell substance!), but they are only visible as long as the shell is rather thin, because they shine through the shell. When the shell becomes increasingly thicker, the spots seem to vanish, but they are only covered by the shell. May be in adult specimens the spots can disappear, I do not know that yet.
In so called "White Jade" and in "jadatzi" the soft tissue of the mantle surface is not capable of producing pigments, so they lack the dark spots of rodatzi visible at the beginning.
The dark spots on the mantle should not be confused with the dark stripes of normal A. fulica and A. fulica "White Jade", which are definitively pigments in the shell.
So it is possible (just a guess......) that the dark markings of the "speckled babies" shown above are not on the shell, but in the soft tissue of the mantle, as they are in A. fulica. Perhaps someone should look for an answer...... .
Kind regards: wolf

Thank you for the information, it's was very interesting! My speckled iredalei-babies will probably look "normal" as adults, but it would be interesting to know why these don't look like they "should" do, why they don't look like their "normal" siblings and all their siblings before them, and as their parents did as babies, and so on.
Do you have any theories?

[coyote]

Wolf, I didn't know that about the mantle having spots that are visible through a thin, translucent shell. I don't think of a snail's body as having spots or patterns, just the shell.

I wonder if it would be possible to breed a speckle-bodied snail?

[wolf]

Hi,
when I first saw rodatzi babies, I supposed the dark spots to be on/in the shell, but round about three years ago I became sceptical for some reasons and wanted to get a solid answer without any doubt. So this was the result:

Mantle surface of a young rodatzi (shell removed):


Removed part of the translucent shell, covering the same region (of the mantle) as shown in the picture above:


At least in A. fulica these pigments of the mantle are produced some time before the dark stripes of the shell develop, so they might be involved in some kind of camouflage in a very early stage of age. In a later stage, the markings of the shell take the job over....... . So these spots on the soft tissue of the mantle are never meant to occur on the head or foot of the snail.

I do not know anything about the inheritance mechanisms in iredalei. As far as I know, even the inheritance in A. fulica still is in discussion, f.e. concerning the question, how many genes are involved in synthesis of the pigments for body and shell. Each of these genes can mutate and so the inheritance pattern might be rather complex. A very simple assumption (might be too simple....) expects the "normal" gene (wild type allel) to be dominant and an altered gene (caused by mutation) to be recessive.

By the way: iredalei seems to be extremely variable in colour pattern of the shell. The holotype was described by Preston (1910) as "painted with broad irregular, somewhat distant and occasionally much broken, transverse chestnut bands and flame markings."
Kind regards: wolf

[SojMad]

Wolf: That is very interesting!

Here's some new pictures of some of my babies. (I've posted them in my photo-thread too)

[wolf]

Hi, SojMad!
Thanks for the new pictures, it is very interesting to have a complete series of successive stages of development, as coyote has pointed out already in an early post.
I have never seen A. iredalei with "broad ........ chestnut bands and flame markings" in captivity (did you??), but this is definitively the "nominate form" of iredalei (= A. iredalei iredalei). It is interesting that only an unnamed, unstreaked subspecies or form of iredalei has reached European tanks so far (at least to my knowledge......). Bequaert (1950): "The number and size of markings vary to such an extent that scarcely two shells are alike. Some examples have only traces of them and a few from Siga Caves and Kibarini are unicolorous brownish-yellow."
Kind regards: wolf

[SnailsPace]

Erm, Wolf how did you get a pic of the mantle with no shell?

[wolf]

Hi,
about two and a half years ago, I had about 80 eggs and put nearly all of them into the deep freezer, but I let four of them hatch in the tank. Three of them are still alive and fully adult meanwhile (of course.......), and one of them was taken for careful examination after freezing. Sorry for that...... .
Kind regards: wolf

[coyote]

I was wondering that too but was hesitant to ask.

[brunni]

Thanks SajMad for sharing all your wonderful pics ! ;D

Like Wolf, I'm also thinking that the darker spots are on the animal and not on the shell. The shells are transparent and the markings of the animal show through when it is in contact with the shell. This must be pretty easy to check when the animals are moving under the shell.

There is one photo ( below ) where a speckled baby is dangling from your finger. The spotting on the shell vanishes in line with the PINK mark. Because it is hanging upside down this portion of the animal is not in contact with the shell and above this line is only the transparent white shell. If they were markings on the shell they would be curved slightly around the axis of the shell - GREEN line.

I saw similar juvenile iredaleis at :
www.kowalskis-schlangenzucht.de/sys/index.php?mact=Album,m5,default,1&m5albumid=81&m5returnid=81&page=81

Attachments:

[coyote]

That's a brilliant observation, brunni.