Population inhibitors in cultures of Bulinus truncatus rohlfsi

Abstract

Bulinus truncatus rohlfsi is a snail host of the human blood fluke Schistosoma haematobium. Observations on the dynamics of laboratory cultures of B. t. rohlfsi are presented from a series of experiments that investigated the effects of population density, pH, and oxygen concentration, and the inhibitory effects of old snail culture media. The data suggest that survival and fecundity are density dependent and that the cause of this effect is a fairly thermostable compound with a molecular weight <1000.