Common Amber Snail (Succinea putris)

Scientific name: Succinea putris (Linnaeus, 1758)
Common name: Common Amber Snail
French name: Ambrette commune, Ambrette amphibie
Order: Stylommatophora
Size: 16 to 27 mm.
Habitat : Perched at height of 30 to 50 cm in the vegetation of damp places like river banks or pond banks. Less frequently you can find it in damp meadows at a longer distance from water.
Food: Rotting plants.
Reproduction : Cross-fertilizing hermaphrodite. The eggs are laid in the soil, on leaves or damp wood.
Geographic area: Temperate Europe, missing in southern and northern regions, western temperate Asia.

The Common Amber Snail is a terrestrial gastropod living in the vegetation near water or in other damp places.
The thin and translucent shell, with an elongated shape, shows three whorls. The last one is about three quarter of the total size. The general colour varies from amber to green-yellow.
The aperture is large and oval-shaped. Like other members of this family, the Slender Amber Snail's body cannot totally enter inside the shell.
The body is yellowish or reddish. It is paler on the lateral sides and do not show any black spots.
Due to some variability, it is very difficult to be 100% sure when you tell apart species of the Succineidae family.
The Slender Amber Snail (Oxyloma elegans) is more closely bound to water. The last whorl is less rounded and gives more a conical shape. The general colour varies from pale yellow to dark brown.
The Slender Amber Snail's body is darker and shows black spots.
Oxyloma sarsii is very similar to Oxyloma elegans. However the shell is more reddish and slightly more rounded.
Oxyloma dunkeri has a longer shell and the first whorl is hardly visible.

Common Amber Snail (Succinea putris) - Yvelines, France - April 19th2011

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Telling Amber snail species apart is very difficult, so I am not 100% sure to have shot a picture of a Common Amber Snail.
The species identification is based on the shape of the shell which seems more rounded than the one of the Slender Amber Snail and by the fact that this observation was done rather far from water. There is a small pond in my garden but at a distance of about ten meter from there.

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André Bon July 2012