Effects of Macronutrients in Ten Different Plant Species on the Food Choice and Growth Performance of Achatina fulica

TL;DR

This study explores how different plant nutrients affect the feeding and growth of giant African snails, finding that lettuce is most preferred and supports the best growth.

Contribution

The study identifies optimal macronutrient ratios in plants that maximize the growth performance of Achatina fulica.

Findings

A. fulica showed highest feeding and growth performance on lettuce compared to nine other plants.

Growth metrics correlated strongly with plant protein, carbohydrate content, and their P:C ratio.

Optimal growth occurs with P:C ratios between 0.41–0.66, while imbalanced ratios (like in fruits or rape) hinder growth.

Abstract

The giant African snail (Achatina fulica) is globally recognized as one of the most invasive mollusk species and is identified as a serious threat to agricultural production and the ecological environment. Although previous studies have demonstrated the preferential feeding habits, growth, and reproduction performance of A. fulica on several plant species, few studies have focused on the correlation between the nutrient content of plant species and its growth performance. Therefore, the present study first selected 10 different plant species as food sources for it and investigated the effects of these plants on its feeding preference and growth performance. Secondly, the correlations between plant nutritional components and its growth performance were analyzed. The results showed that plants’ nutrient content had a significant effect on the feeding preference and growth performance of A. fulica. Based on these findings, our study identifies a rough optimal nutritional intake range for A. fulica when fed different plant species.

The giant African snail (Achatina fulica), a globally invasive mollusk, poses a serious threat to agricultural production and the ecological environment. However, few studies have focused on the feeding preference and growth performance of A. fulica on different plants, with especially few reports on the correlation between the nutrient content of plants and its growth performance. In this study, 10 plant species, including lettuce, stem lettuce, spinach, Chinese cabbage, cabbage, rape, apple, pear, banana, and pitaya, were selected as food sources to explore their effects on the feeding and growth performance of A. fulica. The results showed that A. fulica had the highest selection rate for lettuce and the lowest for rape. Feeding consumption (FC), daily body growth (DBG), daily increase in shell diameter (DISD), daily increase in shell length (DISL), relative consumption rate (RCR), and relative growth rate (RGR) of snails feeding on lettuce were significantly higher than those in the other nine groups. FC, DBG, DISD, DISL, RCR, and RGR were significantly correlated with the nutrient contents (protein, carbohydrate) of the 10 plants and with the protein-to-carbohydrate (P:C) ratio. Finally, based on the correlation between the macronutrient content of plants and the growth performance of A. fulica, we determined that these snails exhibit the optimal growth performance when fed food with the relative balanced P:C ratios (0.41–0.66) while having poor growth performance when fed plants with extremely imbalanced P:C ratios (rape: 2.45 or fruits: 0.04–0.13). Our study shows that A. fulica may cause potential economic losses for many cultivated plants, particularly lettuce, and provides a foundation for certain research values for agricultural prevention and ecological environment protection.

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