The Nucella Lamellosa commonly known as the Frilled Dogwinkles snails have a life span of eight months. The baby snails normally do not have thick shells like their parents until they reach maturity. This normally happens after 30 days and they are able to reproduce after maturity. Unlike other snails, Dogwinkles are not hermaphrodites, they are gender specific.
The females can not mate for a while after reproducing. Prior to my experiment, I observed that, the shell of the snails on the east side were more thicker compared to the shell of the snails on the west side.This difference could be as a result of natural selection. The snails vary in their population, the thickness of their shells is heritable and there is differential survival when a predator is present.
Both populations can also reproduce and pass on traits to their offspring. Since this population satisfies all the aspects of natural selection, the difference between both populations could be due to natural selection.There are crabs present in the east side whiles there are crabs absent on the west side and this is one of the main difference between the two populations. Since the East side satisfies all the requirements needed for natural selection to occur, My hypothesis for the reason why there is a difference between the two Frilled Dogwinkle snails is that, snails of different shell thickness experience differential survival due to crab predation.
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