Hitchhiking behaviour in the obligatory upstream migration of amphidromous snails |
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Authors: | Yasunori Kano |
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Affiliation: | Department of Biological Production and Environmental Science, University of Miyazaki, 1-1 Gakuen-kibanadai-nishi, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan |
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Abstract: | Migratory animals endure high stress during long-distance travel in order to benefit from spatio-temporally fluctuating resources, including food and shelter or from colonization of unoccupied habitats. Along with some fishes and shrimps, nerite snails in tropical to temperate freshwater systems are examples of amphidromous animals that migrate upstream for growth and reproduction after a marine larval phase. Here I report, to my knowledge, the first example of ‘hitchhiking’ behaviour in the obligatory migration of animals: the nerite snail Neritina asperulata appears to travel several kilometres as minute juveniles by firmly attaching to the shells of congeneric, subadult snails in streams of Melanesian Islands, presumably to increase the success rate of migration. |
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Keywords: | amphidromy growth lines hitchhike home scar Neritidae migration |
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