Population structure and coil dimorphism in a tropical land snail

Schilthuizen, Menno and Scott, B. J. and Cabanban, A. S. and Craze, P. G. (2005) Population structure and coil dimorphism in a tropical land snail. Heredity, 95 (3). pp. 216-220. ISSN 0018-067X

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Abstract

Tree snails of the subgenus Amphidromus s. str. are unusual because of the chiral dimorphism that exists in many species, with clockwise ( dextrally) and counter-clockwise ( sinistrally) coiled individuals co-occurring in the same population. Given that mating in snails is normally impeded when the two partners have opposite coil, positive frequency-dependent selection should prevent such dimorphism from persisting. We test the hypothesis that a strong population structure with little movement between tree-based demes may result in the fixation of coiling morphs at a very small spatial scale, but apparent dimorphism at all larger scales. To do so, we describe the spatial structure in a Malaysian population of A. inversus ( Muller, 1774) with 36% dextrals. We marked almost 700 juvenile and adult snails in a piece of forest consisting of 92 separate trees, and recorded dispersal and the proportions of dextrals and sinistrals in all trees over a 7-day period. We observed frequent movement between trees ( 155 events), and found that no trees had snail populations with proportions of dextrals and sinistrals that were significantly different from random. Upon recapture 1 year later, almost two-thirds of the snails had moved away from their original tree. We conclude that population structure alone cannot stabilise the coil dimorphism in Amphidromus.

Item Type: Article
Keyword: Gene flow, Frequency-dependent selection, Fixation, chirality, Camaenidae
Subjects: Q Science > QL Zoology > QL1-991 Zoology > QL360-599.82 Invertebrates
Department: INSTITUTE > Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation
Depositing User: ADMIN ADMIN
Date Deposited: 14 Oct 2011 13:59
Last Modified: 16 Oct 2017 16:24
URI: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/1080

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