Helix pomatia

Helix pomatia, common names the Roman snail, Burgundy snail, or escargot, is a species of large, air-breathing stylommatophoran land snail native to Europe. It is characterized by globular brown shell. It is an edible species. Helix pomatia commonly occurs synanthropically througout its range. The present distribution is considerably affected by dispersion by human and synanthropic occurrences. The northern limits of natural distribution run presumably through central Germany and southern Poland, eastern range limits run through western-most Ukraine and Moldova/Romania to Bulgaria. In the south, the species reaches northern Bulgaria, central Serbia, Bosnia and Hezegovina and Croatia. It occurs in northern Italy southwards to the Po and the Ligurian Apennines. Westerly the native range extends to eastern France. Helix pomatia is now distributed up to western Belarus and the Baltic states, the south of Finland, Sweden and Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, and the Benelux. Scattered introduced populations occur westwards up to northern Spain. In Great Britain, it lives on chalk soils in the south and west of England. In the east, it was introduced up to the Volga. Introduced populations also exist in eastern USA and Canada. The shell is creamy white to light brownish, often with indistinct brown colour bands, but sometimes the banding is well developed and conspicuous. The shell has five to six whorls. The aperture is large. The apertural margin is white and slightly reflected in adult snails. The umbilicus is narrow and partly covered by the reflected columellar margin. The width of the shell is . The height of the shell is . In Central Europe, it occurs in open forests and shrubland on calcareous substrate. It prefers high humidity and lower temperatures, and needs loose soil for burrowing to hibernate and lay its eggs. It lives up to above sea level in the Alps, but usually below . In the south of England, it is restricted to undisturbed grassy or bushy wastelands, usually not in gardens; it has a low reproduction rate and low powers of dispersal.

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Related concepts (5)

Land snail

A land snail is any of the numerous species of snail that live on land, as opposed to the sea snails and freshwater snails. Land snail is the common name for terrestrial gastropod mollusks that have shells (those without shells are known as slugs). However, it is not always easy to say which species are terrestrial, because some are more or less amphibious between land and fresh water, and others are relatively amphibious between land and salt water.

Helix pomatia

Mollusca

Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals, after the Arthropoda; members are known as molluscs or mollusks (ˈmɒləsk). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is estimated between 60,000 and 100,000 additional species. The proportion of undescribed species is very high. Many taxa remain poorly studied. Molluscs are the largest marine phylum, comprising about 23% of all the named marine organisms. Numerous molluscs also live in freshwater and terrestrial habitats.