Stratford, JulianaBattaglia, Loretta2022-07-082022-07-082022-04https://hdl.handle.net/1969.6/92765Pomacea 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).en-USAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/aquaticexoticsgastropodnonindigenouspantanalswampPresentation