Native vs. Invasive community interactions: Snail herbivory in Louisiana and Mato Grosso (Brazil) wetlands

Pomacea maculata is the largest freshwater snail in the world. This native of Brazil was introduced to the southeastern United States in 1989. A documented voracious consumer, it continues to spread and threaten wetlands in this region, where it happens to overlap with two highly invasive aquatic macrophytes that also hail from Brazil: Salvinia minima and Eichhornia crassipes. This invasive community poses a great threat to native wetland ecosystem structure and function, but also presents a unique opportunity to examine multi- species interactions with shared evolutionary histories. The primary objectives of this study are threefold:1) to determine whether P. maculata diet reflects a preference for native Louisiana macrophytes over the co-evolved invasive plants; 2) to determine whether P. maculata can be a viable biocontrol agent for S. minima and E. crassipes in their invaded range; and 3) to compare P. maculata herbivory in its invaded and native range. Project objectives will be addressed through a series of controlled feeding trials using snails and plants from local populations in Louisiana and Mato Grosso (Brazil).