Sarah:
 
The Eastern Mud Snail (Ilynassa obsoleta) lives in quiet, intertidal to shallow
(<3 ft) subtidal areas along most of the US east coast (Canada to Florida).  It
prefers the saltier ends of estuaries (>20 ppt salinity) and lives in large
numbers (hundreds to thousands) under good conditions.  It is not necessarily
associated with the salt marsh, but with the muddy (or muddy sand) tide flats
that usually occur near the marsh.
 
Barely paraphrasing R. Tucker Abbott's Guide to Field Identification Seashells of
North America, the mud snail is one of the more active scavengers, with the keen
ability to taste the chemical composition of dead flesh spread through the water
column.  They eat mostly dead crabs and fish.  This makes them very important to
the marsh by quickly recycling nutrients and to humans by keeping down the smell
of rotting stuff at low tide (OK, so they aren't that much direct help to
humans).  Sexes are separate; the male is usually slightly smaller.  Egg
capsules, containing about 50 eggs each, are laid on  algae, shells or rocks.
Veliger larvae swim for about 2 weeks before settling and developing into snails.
This group of snails is different from most because they are attracted to light,
and this species is unlike most nassas by having a digestive crystalline rod.
I'll leave it up to the high schooler writing this report to figure out how this
crystalline rod helps the snail's digestion.
 
Larry Eaton
North Carolina
 
Sarah R. Watson wrote:
 
> Dear Conch-L
>     I recieved this email from a High school student doing a project for his
> biology class.  He is looking for information on Iyanass obsoleta (the common
> name he gave me was a Mud Snail)I only knew the feeding habits but everything
> else is unknown to me.
>
> 1. complete taxonomic name of mud snail
> 2. where in the marsh the mud snail lives
> 3. feeding habits of the mud snail
> 4. reproductive habits of the mud snail
> 5. importance to the marsh
> 6. importance to humans
> 7. interesting trivia about it
>
> If anyone could answer any of these questions please let me know.
>
> Thanks
> Sarah Watson