Abstract
The snails which are the subject of this chapter, the Opistho- branchia, are less numerous than their ubiquitous cousins, the Prosobranchia. They damage neither man nor his works and transmit no disease. Nevertheless, they are greatly admired by evolu- tionary-minded zoologists, marine population ecologists, and a small but vigorous and growing band of hearty amateur naturalists, taxonomists and nature photographers. If this seems paradoxical, the question will be answered the first time you discover a nudi- branch crawling over a rock, or are confronted with a sacoglossan in a batch of seaweeds. The opisthobranchs are truely the avante- garde of the snail world. They alone of all the many thousands of marine snails have been freed by evolution of the burden imposed by the gastropod shell. Liberated in a sense from this encumbering and conservative influence, they are now clearly in the evolutionary process of striking out in many divergent directions, probing unusual and unorthodox pathways in the solution of all the ancient problems which animals must solve.
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© 1975 Plenum Press, New York
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Franz, D.R. (1975). Opisthobranch Culture. In: Smith, W.L., Chanley, M.H. (eds) Culture of Marine Invertebrate Animals. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8714-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8714-9_16
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