In the last months we have started to rearing our own lab population and families of Lymnaea stagnalis (Linnaeus, 1758) for future experiments.
At the moment, we have 16 families of this species of large air-breathing freshwater snail. It's an omnivorous aquatic pulmonate widely distributed and very common. And every day we are learning new things about this pond-dwelling organisms.
Wait for future news about what these little ones can do!
My name is Julie Egon and I did this 4-month internship as part of my first year of master in Ecology and Sustainable Development at the Catholic University of the West in Angers, France. This internship was carried out within the Department of Ecosystem Biology of the University of Southern Bohemia under the supervision of Julien Mocq, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Southern Bohemia and Patrick Gillet, a professor at the Catholic University of the west, in Angers. On a personal level, I derive from this course many benefits and enriching experiences. This internship allowed me to better understand this environment and to acquire a particular rigor in my work. This was also an opportunity for me to deepen my knowledge of ecology and entomology, two subjects that are close to my heart.
Reference : Egon. J. (2016) Influences of biotic factors on predation on Daphnia magna by Chaoborus obscuripes in an intraguild predation system; M1 thesis; Université Catholique de l’Ouest ; 31pp.
Under the supervision of Dr. J. Mocq
IntraGuild Predation (IGP) is an interaction in which a predator, called the top (IG predator), can consume another predator (IG prey), both sharing a common resource called extraguild prey (Polis and McCormick, 1987). It is very common in natural environment and it may have an important impact on the structure of the communities. Some abiotic and biotic variables influence the intensity of intraguild predation, such as extraguild prey density: if this density is high, competition between predators will tend to be low and there will be little IGP (Lucas et al., 1998).