Upside-Down Gliding ofLymnaea

Abstract

The pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis can often be observed moving upside down on its back just below the surface of the water. We have termed this form of movement "upside-down gliding." To elucidate the mechanism of this locomotion, we performed a series of experiments involving behavioral analyses and microscopic observations. These experiments were designed (1) to measure the speed of this locomotion; (2) to determine whether the mucus secreted from the foot of Lymnaea repels water, thereby allowing the snail to exploit the surface tension of the water for upside-down gliding; and (3) to observe the beating of foot cilia in this behavior. The beating of these cilia is thought to be the primary driving force for upside-down gliding. Our results demonstrate that upside-down gliding is an efficient active process involving the secretion of mucus that floats up to the water surface to serve as a substrate upon which cilia beat to cause locomotion at the underside of the water surface.

Effect of acute exposure to low environmental calcium on respiration and locomotion in Lymnaea stagnalis (L.)

“…A question that has to be addressed is whether the significantly faster speed that we observed in the high calcium environment is abnormally fast for L. stagnalis. In two recent studies the speed of crawling locomotion was determined to be 0.47mms -1 on Teflon plates (Aono et al, 2008) and 0.51mms -1 on silicone plates (Miyamae et al, 2010). The conditions in which the snails were maintained prior to both these studies had a similar calcium concentration to our high calcium environment and both produced similar crawling speeds to those found in our high calcium conditions.…”

Coordinated Feeding Behavior in Trichoplax, an Animal without Synapses

“…Although ciliary gliding occurs in several groups of animals, that found in Trichoplax appears to be novel. Cilia in cnidarian larvae, annelids, and planarians instead beat metachronously during gliding [ 17 – 19 ], as do cilia used for swimming [ 20 ]. Cells in epithelia generally are interconnected by gap junctions that provide for electrical signaling, movement of small molecules, and coordination of cilia [ 21 ] but no gap junctions or genes associated with gap junctions are present in Trichoplax [ 2 , 6 , 11 ].…”

Production of Basal Bodies in bulk for dense multicilia formation

“…Accordingly, in contrast to the lobe-finned fish (such as lungfish), MCCs of the ray-finned fish (such as zebrafish), which have no Deup1 , contain only sparse cilia 37 , 38 . Many invertebrates, however, possess MCCs with dense multicilia 39 – 42 . Deuterosome-like ultrastructures have also been reported in some invertebrate species 43 , 44 .…”