Habitat
Some of the more familiar and better-known gastropods are terrestrial gastropods (the land snails and slugs) and some live in freshwater, but more than two thirds of all named species live in a marine environment.
Gastropods have a worldwide distribution from the near Arctic and Antarctic zones to the tropics. They have become adapted to almost every kind of existence on earth, having colonized every medium available except the air.
In habitats where there is not enough calcium carbonate to build a really solid shell, such as on some acidic soils on land, there are still various species of slugs, and also some snails with a thin translucent shell, mostly or entirely composed of the protein conchiolin.
Snails such as Sphincterochila boissieri and Xerocrassa seetzeni have adapted to desert conditions, other snails have adapted to an existence in ditches, near deepwater hydrothermal vents, the pounding surf of rocky shores, caves, and many other diverse areas.
Read more about this topic: Gastropoda
Famous quotes containing the word habitat:
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)