It seems that land snails are often dispersed by birds, but most of literature is mainly theoretical in this.
The classic reference is Kew, 1893, The Dispersal of Shells, Kegan Paul, London. A more recent summary is Rees, 1965, The aerial dispersal of Mollusca, Proceedings of the Malacological Society of London 36:269-282, and a very recent paper is Wada, Kawakami, & Chiba, 2012, Snails can survive passage through a bird's digestive system. Journal of Biogeography 39:69-73. These and a little judicious searching with Google Scholar should get you into the literature.
Yes, I know these works. But these classic two are mainly theoretical regarding land snails, there are so few such cases like with Vitrina pellucida in Rees, 1965. And only some snail species can survive in bird's digestive system, so it looks more like special case. Aqutic and semi-aquatic snails can be dispersed by water birds. But it seems that there is still no any good empiric data on the stenecious forest and grassland snails.
The only reference of actual observations of upland mollusks on birds familiar to me is Pearce et al., 2012, Land slugs (Gastropoda: Pulmonata) on birds demonstrates dispersal potential.Nautilus 126:38-40. There are of course a number of papers inferring avian dispersal from distribution data, with which I assume you are familiar. But I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the observation in Wada et al. as a special case, The distribution of Tornatellides (the subject of the Wada paper) strongly suggests that rare long-distance over-water dispersal, probably by birds, is characteristic of snails of this genus; indeed, it is hard to imagine any alternative mechanism for the unusual distribution of this genus. See Cooke & Kondo, 1960, Revision of Tornatellinidae and Achatinellidae (Gastropoda, Pulmonata. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 221, p. 245, fig. 104.
Some examples you can find in Folia Malacologica http://www.foliamalacologica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=56
Shikov & Vinogradov, No 21(2) 2013 or Maciorowski, Urbańska & Gierszal, No 20 (2) 2012. All paper are available on-line.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Zoology
- Ornithology