Kickstarter now live for the Leucochloridium plush! I had this smaller prototype made already, but the final plush is going to be BIGGER and more realistically proportioned!
You can preorder a plush, an enamel pin, or a combo of both for the next 30 days. The plush will need a couple thousand dollars in factory costs alone, but if successful, there’ll be at least 100 of them made with some left over that I’ll put up on etsy by fall/winter!
16 days to go, needs another $1200 to meet production!
With 10 days left and $600 to go, I’m going to reblog this once a day with a new and different fact about this beautiful animal!
FACT 1: we aren’t really sure what they do to snail behavior
(photo by Roman Providukhin) The conventional wisdom surrounding Leucochloridium is that it alters the behavior of its snail host to seek light instead of shade, making it more visible to its bird hosts. Recent studies, however, find that the difference is more subtle; uninfected snails of the host species are already active in well lit areas, however, the infected snails were found to spend “moderately” more time in the open. The biggest difference in behavior was that they spent more time at higher elevation than uninfected snails, where they would be seen by predators first. What we still don’t know is exactly how the parasite causes this particular change.
FACT 2: the “brood sac” stage is like a multi-headed hydra
Leucochloridium is a member of Platyhelminthes, specifically a trematode flatworm. Trematodes go through various life cycle stages as they pass from one host to the next, sometimes including a “sporocyst” stage that exists to just keep replicating larvae. In Leucochloridium, the sporocyst is essentially one flatworm that continuously branches, fractal-like, in a radiating blob that continuously produces the famous “brood sacs.” These have a “staggered” development so that only two to three are mature at a given time, but why does it need to keep making them?! That will be Fact #3! yay!
FACT 3: the “brood sacs” can leave home!
(another photo by Roman)
The thing about Platyhelminthes, including planarians, flukes, tapeworms and marine flatworms, is that their life functions are pretty much evenly distributed throughout their body mass. Cut a piece off, and that piece is just as alive as the worm it came from. As the parasite continuously grows its “brood sac” bodies, the oldest and largest can eventually get pushed right out of the snail’s skin, break off, and crawl away. They don’t live long without their host, but now their resemblance to caterpillars or maggots is even more convincing, and we aren’t certain, but this may be the “real intention” of the parasite; not necessarily to sacrifice the snail to a bird, as much as that does happen, but to use the snail as transportation for the false caterpillars it keeps making. This could also vary by species, or it could be that the parasite evolved first to alter the appearance of the snail, and breaking off these “extra” sacs came incidentally. This all sounds increasingly cruel to the snail, but it’s not as bad as you think, which I’ll get into tomorrow!
FACT 4: most of the snails are kind of okay??
If a snail is uncomfortable or in pain (or whatever it experiences like pain), it tends to retreat into its shell, it doesn’t eat, and it very quickly dies. “Stress” alone kills snails, as anyone can tell you who keeps snails at pets! The fact that they go about their usual snaily business indicates that they barely notice the presence of Leucochloridium at all, and even when the brood sacs break out of the host, snails are quite good at regeneration. The parasite is only really deadly if it gets the snail completely eaten by a bird, but in many cases, birds still get away with only the “brood sacs,” and there may be enough left of the snail to grow back. The infection only lasts a few months, from spring to late summer, and snails harboring the parasite otherwise live what seems to be a normal lifespan. As near as we can tell…becoming a caterpillar-faced zombie is more an “inconvenience” a lot of the snails never realize ever happened.
FACT 5: we thought they infected only one group of snails
For decades, Leucochloridium’s sporocyst stage was officially known almost exclusively from snails of the family Succineidae, or “Amber Snails,” but a 2010′s survey of gastropod parasites in Chile discovered a case of Leucochloridium paradoxum - the same species found in amber snails around the world - in the partially shelled (semi-slug) gastropod Omalonyx gayana:
The parasites are easily spread to new environments by the migration of bird hosts, but it was thought they needed to find populations of amber snail to actually develop. The discovery in O. gayana could be because these half-snails are related to the amber snails, but it could also mean that these parasites are able to adapt to a wider variety of gastropods than we thought, as long as they’re an appropriate size. Also, THE PLUSH HAS BEEN FUNDED! You can now preorder with a guarantee they can be made and that you’re owed one! I’ll keep posting facts though!
FACT 6: the adult stage is tinier!
The “snail zombifying” sporocyst as mentioned before is a special life cycle stage that replicates thousands of microscopic larvae, essentially genetic clones of itself. It’s like a self-replicating super-larva, which actually isn’t uncommon at all in invertebrates and especially parasites. When the clone larvae are ingested by a bird, they become the true adult form, a tiny little fluke that hangs out in the cloaca of the bird host, clinging with its two huge suckers while it releases thousands of fertilized eggs for the bird to distribute in its droppings. These cause no noticeable harm to the bird, though they probably feed on minute amounts of blood and could be mildly irritating. We actually don’t know this for sure, and that’s also not uncommon to parasites.
After a few weeks to a few months, they finally age and die.
