Abstract
The adults and larvae of some groups in the coleopteran family Carabidae are known to prey on snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda). Most species of the carabid tribe Licinini are believed to feed on live snails. However, the snail-eating behavior of only a few species has been studied. Whether adults of the licinine genus Badister can prey on live snails was tested by providing 155 live snails of 20 species (eleven terrestrial and nine aquatic species) to adults of Badister pictus Bates, 1873, and observing their behavior under laboratory conditions. Six of the 20 snail species have an operculum that can close the aperture of the shell. Each B. pictus adult attacked all of the snails provided. Badister pictus successfully preyed on ten terrestrial and six aquatic snail species. These beetles used their strikingly asymmetrical mandibles to break the dextral shells along the dorsal part of the whorls from the outer lip of the aperture towards the apex, allowing subsequent consumption of the soft bodies. However, 41.9% of snails could not be eaten by B. pictus adults. The rate of predation success by B. pictus decreased with increasing shell size and thickness of snails. In addition, the presence of an operculum decreased the rate of predation success by B. pictus. The results show that the shell size, thickness, and operculum of some snail species could play important roles in preventing B. pictus mandibles from breaking the shells. Therefore, Badister beetles may exert selective pressure on the evolution of defensive shell structures in small-sized snails.
Highlights
Gastropods protect their soft bodies from predators through shells (Vermeij 1974); some gastropod-eating animals use specific structures and tactics to break open these shells to allow effective access to the bodies (Zipser and Vermeij 1978; Palmer 1979; Inoda et al 2003; Konuma and Chiba 2007)
We provided various types of snails to adults of Badister pictus Bates, 1873 under laboratory conditions to investigate whether B. pictus can prey on live snails using their mandibles
Our results indicate that the shell morphologies and opercula of some snails likely play important roles in defending against B. pictus predation
Summary
Gastropods protect their soft bodies from predators through shells (Vermeij 1974); some gastropod-eating animals use specific structures and tactics to break open these shells to allow effective access to the bodies (Zipser and Vermeij 1978; Palmer 1979; Inoda et al 2003; Konuma and Chiba 2007). Larvae of giant water scavenger beetles use their asymmetrical mandibles to break the right-coiled shells of some freshwater snail species (Inoda et al 2003; Hayashi and Sugiura 2020). Adults of the genera Licinus Latreille, 1802 and Diplocheila Brullé, 1834 break snail shells using their extraordinarily asymmetrical mandibles (El-Moursy and Ball 1959; Brandmayr and Zetto Brandmayr 1986; Ball 1992). Licinini comprises 238 species in 23 genera (Anichtchenko et al 2021), the snail-eating behavior has been studied in only a few species (Brandmayr and Zetto Brandmayr 1986)
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