Roman Snail
Lat. “Helix pomatia“
species
of family
“Helix Snails“
1 species
Helix pomatia, common names the Roman snail, Burgundy snail, edible snail or escargot, is a species of large, edible, air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Helicidae. It is a European species. In the English language it is called by the French name escargot when used in cooking (escargot simply means ‘snail’). Although this species is highly prized as a food it is difficult to cultivate and rarely farmed commercially.
Distribution
The present distribution of Helix pomatia is considerably affected by the dispersion by human and synanthropic occurrences. The northern limits of their natural distribution run presumably through central Germany and southern Poland with the eastern range limits running through western-most Ukraine and Moldova/Romania to Bulgaria. In the south, the species reaches northern Bulgaria, central Serbia, Bosnia and Hezegovina and Croatia. It occurs in northern Italy southwards to the Po and the Ligurian Apennines. Westerly the native range extends to eastern France. Currently, H. pomatia is distributed up to western Russia (broadly distributed in and around Moskva), to the south of Finland, Sweden and Norway, in Denmark and the Benelux. Scattered introduced populations occur westwards up to northern Spain. In Great Britain, it lives on chalk soils in the south and west of England. In the east, isolated populations live as far as south of Novosibirsk. Introduced populations also exist in the eastern United States and Canada.
Description
The shell is creamy white to light brownish, often with indistinct brown colour bands although sometimes the banding is well developed and conspicuous. The shell has five to six whorls. The aperture is large. The apertural margin is slightly reflected in adult snails. The umbilicus is narrow and partly covered by the reflected columellar margin. The width of the shell is 30–50 millimetres (1.2–2.0 inches). The height of the shell is 30–45 mm (1.2–1.8 in).
Conservation
This species is listed in IUCN Red List, and in European Red List of Non-marine Molluscs as of least concern. H. pomatia is threatened by continuous habitat destructions and drainage, usually less threatened by commercial collections. Many unsuccessful attempts have been made to establish the species in various parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland; it only survived in natural habitats in southern England, and is threatened by intensive farming and habitat destruction. It is of lower concern in Switzerland and Austria, but many regions restrict commercial collecting. Within its native range, Helix pomatia is mostly a common species. It is also considered Least Concern by the IUCN Red List. However, it is listed in the Annex V of the EU’s Habitats Directive and protected by law in several countries to regulate harvesting from free living populations.
Germany: listed as a specially protected species in annex 1 of the Bundesartenschutzverordnung. Austria: the protection is up to Bundesländer, and the species is protected in some (e.g. Burgenland). Great Britain: protected in England under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it illegal to kill, injure, collect or sell these snails. France: collecting prohibited of individuals with shell diameter under 3 cm and during the period from 1 April to 30 June. Denmark: commercial collecting is prohibited.
Uses
The intestinal juice of H. pomatia contains large amounts of aryl, steroid, and glucosinolate sulfatase activities. These sulfatases have a broad specificity, so they are commonly used as a hydrolyzing agent in analytical procedures such as chromatography where they are used to prepare samples for analysis.
Culinary use and history
Roman snails were eaten by Ancient Romans. Nowadays, these snails are especially popular in French cuisine. In the English language, it is called by the French name escargot when used in cooking (escargot simply means snail). Although this species is highly prized as a food, it is difficult to cultivate and is rarely farmed commercially.
References
This article incorporates public domain text from the reference.
Further reading
Egorov R. (2015). “Helix pomatia Linnaeus, 1758: the history of its introduction and recent distribution in European Russia”. Malacologica Bohemoslovaca 14: 91–101. PDF (in Russian) Roumyantseva E. G. & Dedkov V. P. (2006). “Reproductive properties of the Roman snail Helix pomatia L. in the Kaliningrad Region, Russia”. Ruthenica 15: 131–138. abstract Archived 2018-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
External links
Linnaeus, C. (1758). Systema Naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Editio decima, reformata [10th revised edition], vol. 1: 824 pp. Laurentius Salvius: Holmiae Korábek, O., Juřičková, L. & Petrusek, A. (2015). Splitting the Roman snail Helix pomatia Linnaeus, 1758 (Stylommatophora: Helicidae) into two: redescription of the forgotten Helix thessalica Boettger, 1886. Journal of Molluscan Studies 82: 11–22 Animal Diversity Web page
Ancestry Graph
Further Information
Copyright
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Helix pomatia the free encyclopedia Wikipedia which is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). On Wikipedia a list of authors is available.