Water evaporation as a function of temperature, humidity, air velocity and body size in inactive terrestrial pulmonate Theba pisana

TL;DR

This study explores how environmental factors and body size affect water evaporation in snails, revealing how they adapt to conserve water in arid environments.

Contribution

The study identifies threshold temperatures and active physiological responses in snails that reduce water evaporation under varying environmental conditions.

Findings

Evaporation rates in Theba pisana are explained by 72.8% using temperature, humidity, air velocity, and body size.

Larger snails have lower evaporation rates at low temperatures, but this trend reverses above a threshold temperature.

Snails actively reduce evaporation to conserve water rather than increase it to avoid overheating in arid conditions.

Abstract

The conservation of water is of great importance to terrestrial snails in order to survive in arid environments. However, evaporation of body water does occur, and it is unclear whether snails are able to actively reduce the evaporation or whether increased environmental temperature inevitably leads to increased evaporation. Physically, the quantity of evaporating water is largely determined by the temperature, the relative humidity and the velocity of the surrounding air, as well as the surface area of the evaporating body. Theba pisana, a widespread Mediterranean land snail, is exposed to a wide range of ambient temperatures. For this species the experimentally recorded evaporation rate per mass was tested as a ‘response’ variable to the ‘explanatory’ variables temperature, relative humidity and air velocity using multiple regression modelling. The variation in specific evaporation of T. pisana could be explained to 72.8% by these parameters. Threshold temperatures, which depended on the parameters relative humidity, air velocity and body size, were found to induce an active response in the snail that reduced their evaporation rate. A comparative analysis of the specific evaporation rate of different-sized snails shows that, at low temperatures, larger snails have a lower specific evaporation rate than smaller snails. However, above a threshold temperature this trend reversed, depending on air velocity and relative humidity. In general, the evaporation rate is lower at higher relative humidities. In the specified temperature range (23–35 °C) the snails tend to actively reduce the evaporation rate to conserve water rather than increase the evaporation rate to avoid overheating. These findings provide valuable information about the physiological adaptations that support survival in water-limited environments, offering important implications for understanding arid-adapted species such as desert snails.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40850-025-00236-0.

Figures