Mystery snails are NOT hermaphordites...See below:
The apple snail has separated sexes (dioecious) and is NOT a hermaphroditic snail.
The differences between the sexes are not visible at the
shell colour or patterns, but in several species, a difference in shell shape has been described. For example in
Pomacea canaliculata, the aperture (opening) in the
male has a rounder opening than in the
female because of the large penial complex. This sex-difference is not very well visible and it's not a very reliable to dicriminate on individual base, but clear when measuring large amount of snails (in other words, it's possible to show the difference based on statistics).
In some species however, the difference between male and female are very obvious in the adult snails. For example in
Pomacea flagellata flagellata, the male has a very wide shell lip (the shell opening actually has the shape of a trumpet) when reaching sexual maturity. This hasn't been described in the literature yet (october 2000), but the author of this site has observed this in his entire
Flagellata population. This shell shape difference cannot be explained by the space occupied by the penial complex, but is rather a reproduction strategy: the male can block the entrance of the female's mantle cavity during mating, in order to prevent other males from copulating with the female. Note that this is only a hypothesis of the
author. No serious scientific research has been carried out on this topic.
To produce an egg, the egg cell is brought to the
receptaculum seminis. In this place, where the sperm from the male is stored, the fertilisation of the egg cells takes place. The spermatozoa (sperm cells) of the male can survive for more than a month in the female, and several
egg clutches can be fertilised with a single copulation. DOH!
I believe they were being fertilized before all the dads decided to make them single mothers....LOL.
I still have another week, and then 2 weeks to see.
Info from:
www.applesnail.net
