The love story of Jeremy, the left-behind snail
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Publicly released:
2020-06-03 09:01
Jeremy, the one-in-a-million ‘lefty’ garden snail, became an internet shellebrity after international researchers launched a #snaillove media campaign to help find a mate. The researchers called upon citizen scientists to help Jeremy find another reverse-coiled snail and figure out whether the backwards-twisting shell was an accident or a trait that can be inherited from mama and papa snail. The campaign was a success, and Jeremy was able to mate with another leftie snail just before its death, allowing researchers to figure out that its unique left-coiling shell is the result of a genetic accident, rather than an inherited trait.
Journal/conference: Biology Letters
Link to research (DOI): 10.1098/rsbl.2020.0110
Organisation/s: University of Nottingham, UK
Funder: No direct funding was received for this study. The core facilities and salary were funded by the University of Nottingham
Media release
Internet ‘shellebrity’ reflects on origin of rare mirror-image snails
Biology Letters
Following the discovery of very rare ‘lefty’ garden snail, geneticist Dr Angus Davison launched a #snaillove media campaign to find a mate. The snail that was named ‘Jeremy’, after a garden-loving UK politician, became a global sensation and internet ‘shellebrity’. More than 1000 news, radio, television and science articles, including by the BBC and New York Times, featured the plight of the lovelorn snail. By bringing together a worldwide group of citizen scientists, and the lefty snails that they had found, Davison used the publicity to understand what makes an exceptional reversed-coiled snail such as Jeremy. The findings showed that it is usually a developmental accident, rather than an inherited condition, that makes a lefty garden snail. There was also a happy ending for Jeremy, the snail, in mating and producing offspring just before his/her death.
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