Gustavo Yomar Hattori & Bruno Sampaio Sant’Anna 
Amazonian Apple Snails 

The Amazon forest is one of the world’s most complex, unknown and threatened ecosystems that holds a considerable part of the Earth’s biodiversity. This ecosystem needs greater scientific attention so that we can better understand the features of its fauna and conserve species before they become extinct. Thus, this book addresses issues about resources within Earth’s largest rainforest. In addition, the knowledge of the molluscs in the Amazon region is extremely scarce, and in most cases only information concerning their spatial distribution is available. Specifically, for the gastropods of the Pomacea genus, which were introduced in every continent and became known as pests, scientific knowledge in native areas is very important to understand. Research may help to control these organisms and the many areas they tend to invade. Specialists and scientists that work with apple snails in the Amazon and around the world can access new information about the species that inhabit this region with unprecedented advances in various scientific aspects such as diversity and occurrence, anatomy aspects of Pomacea in Peru, and phylogeny of this group in the Amazon region. Information about the biological aspects such as imposex development, effects of the dry season duration in the gastropod growth, aquaculture technical to human food production, and reproduction (including oviposition, fecundity, substrate selection, ultrastructural view of spermatozoa and egg predation). All of this is synthesized to bring the reader an informative compilation of data and research focusing on apple snails of the Amazon.