Biomphalaria alexandrina is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of air-breathing freshwater snail

Freshwater snail

A freshwater snail is one kind of freshwater mollusc, the other kind being freshwater clams and mussels, i.e. freshwater bivalves. Specifically a freshwater snail is a gastropod that lives in a watery non-marine habitat. The majority of freshwater gastropods have a shell, with very few exceptions....

, an aquatic

Aquatic animal

An aquatic animal is an animal, either vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most or all of its life. It may breathe air or extract its oxygen from that dissolved in water through specialised organs called gills, or directly through its skin. Natural environments and the animals that...

 pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family

Family

In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...

 Planorbidae, the ram's horn snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

s and their allies.

Habitat

Biomphalaria alexandrina lives in freshwater, for example in irrigation canals

Surface irrigation

Surface irrigation is defined as the group of application techniques where water is applied and distributed over the soil surface by gravity. It is by far the most common form of irrigation throughout the world and has been practiced in many areas virtually unchanged for thousands of years.Surface...

.

Feeding habits

In captivity, Biomphalaria alexandrina can be fed on boiled leaves of lettuce

Lettuce

Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant of the daisy family Asteraceae. It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable. It is eaten either raw, notably in salads, sandwiches, hamburgers, tacos, and many other dishes, or cooked, as in Chinese cuisine in which the stem becomes just as important...

.

Parasites

Biomphalaria alexandrina serves as an intermediate host

Intermediate host

A secondary host or intermediate host is a host that harbors the parasite only for a short transition period, during which some developmental stage is completed. For trypanosomes, the cause of sleeping sickness, humans are the primary host, while the tsetse fly is the secondary host...

 for Schistosoma mansoni

Schistosoma mansoni

Schistosoma mansoni is a significant parasite of humans, a trematode that is one of the major agents of the disease schistosomiasis. The schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma mansoni is intestinal schistosomiasis....

Hybrid

There is a known hybrid Biomphalaria glabrata

Biomphalaria glabrata

Biomphalaria glabrata is a species of air-breathing freshwater snail, an aquatic pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Planorbidae, the ram's horn snails....

 × Biomphalaria alexandrina, from Egypt.

Phylogeny

A cladogram

Cladogram

A cladogram is a diagram used in cladistics which shows ancestral relations between organisms, to represent the evolutionary tree of life. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters, DNA and RNA sequencing data and computational...

 showing phylogenic relations of species in the genus Biomphalaria:

Further reading

• Kamel E. G. (1984) "The egg mass and growth rate of Biomphalaria alexandrina under laboratory conditions". Journal of the Egyptian Society of Parasitology 14(2): 377-384.