BOFIN Slug Scouts

[skye @ bofin]

We are incredibly grateful to everyone who has registered as a as a Slug Scout to help BOFIN and the scientists at John Innes Centre. As you will have seen in the media coverage of our campaign, slugs are a huge problem for British farmers, causing £43m of damage to food crops every year. Our SLIMERS project is exploring how we can control them in the best way possible. One of these is testing slug resistant wheat and it’s this project that needs slugs!

Within this thread, we will be sharing lots of sluggy information and ways in which you can contribute to important scientific research battling the slimey pests!

 

[skye @ bofin]

Grey field slugs: small in size, big in impact!

These little creatures may only be 3 to 4.5cm long but they are big problem for farmers. In fact they cause £43million worth of damage to crops every year! The SLIMERS project is exploring sustainable ways for farmers to control these slimey pests, including testing slug resistant wheat varieties.

Thank you to everyone who has signed up to help by sending slugs to our scientists – look out for an email from us this week

 

[skye @ bofin]

#FunFactFriday

Did you know? The slug is a hermaphrodite and can lay 10 to 50 eggs per batch which means up to 500 per season

With eggs hatching after just a few weeks it’s no wonder they multiply so successfully in our fields and gardens!

Let us know your slug facts below

 

[Chris _]

We are incredibly grateful to everyone who has registered as a as a Slug Scout to help BOFIN and the scientists at John Innes Centre. As you will have seen in the media coverage of our campaign, slugs are a huge problem for British farmers, causing £43m of damage to food crops every year. Our SLIMERS project is exploring how we can control them in the best way possible. One of these is testing slug resistant wheat and it’s this project that needs slugs!

Within this thread, we will be sharing lots of sluggy information and ways in which you can contribute to important scientific research battling the slimey pests!

Just received my first slimer pack, thank you. Problem: Did a recce last night armed with new knowledge contained in the pack and now I am really confused; I have Black ones that look brown, brown Spanish ones that are black and I think one Leopard slug that was attempting to eat a concrete nodule (that one had issues, for sure). Questions:

1. Why do you only want the field slugs? They appear to be comparitively rare against the Black and Spanish ones.

2. How do you positively ID a Field slug against two other very similar species?

3. How much does it matter if I accidentally send you the wrong flavours of slug (eww)?

P.S. They definitely like beer. There was a positive slugfest going down in our homebrew spillage. That lot went airborne into the adjacent Council grassland. I reckon I got boomerang-action on a few of the bigger party goers. They fly well; Land well, not so much.

Thanks.
Chris.

 

[skye @ bofin]

Just received my first slimer pack, thank you. Problem: Did a recce last night armed with new knowledge contained in the pack and now I am really confused; I have Black ones that look brown, brown Spanish ones that are black and I think one Leopard slug that was attempting to eat a concrete nodule (that one had issues, for sure). Questions:

1. Why do you only want the field slugs? They appear to be comparitively rare against the Black and Spanish ones.

2. How do you positively ID a Field slug against two other very similar species?

3. How much does it matter if I accidentally send you the wrong flavours of slug (eww)?

P.S. They definitely like beer. There was a positive slugfest going down in our homebrew spillage. That lot went airborne into the adjacent Council grassland. I reckon I got boomerang-action on a few of the bigger party goers. They fly well; Land well, not so much.

Thanks.
Chris.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the comment and glad to hear you have received your packs to collect the slime pests and put them to good use! For your questions, I have called upon some of our slug experts, Prof. Keith Walters (@Repwal) and Dr. Kerry Howard (@KMcDH) Once your pack is ready to send back to the lab, we would love to see some pics!

 

[Repwal]

Hi Chris,

Many thanks for requesting a slimer pack, your help with this project is extremely valuable so we very much appreciate your interest

I am afraid that there are a large number of slug species in the UK – some say up to nearly 60 if you include introductions from overseas which may or may not have established viable colonies. As such, it is not a surprise that you have become a bit uncertain regarding identification of the grey field slug, it simply shows how carefully you are looking at those you find.

Without specimens or pictures, it is difficult to be certain what you have found but, based on the species that are often found in gardens and those that are most commonly encountered, I would guess that you are correct to say the “Black ones that look brown” may be Spanish slugs from the genus Arion. These can grow up to quite a large size and on bigger ones you can clearly see striations on the dorsal side of the body, these striations are a useful feature when separating them from grey field slugs. Leopard slugs can also become very large and are commonly encountered in many parts of the country this year, but attempting to eat a concrete nodule is a new one on me, it clearly does have issues as you say!). To answer your questions:

1. Why do you only want the field slugs? They appear to be comparatively rare against the Black and Spanish ones:-
We need these specimens to test response of common slug pest species in UK arable fields to slug resistant wheat lines. These lines could be thought of as “heritage” lines, in so far as they were collected/grown 100 years ago. The concept is, we have reports that they resist slug attack/damage, so they may have genes we can use in current breeding programmes to confer such resistance to modern wheat varieties, thus making slug control in our crops more sustainable. To do this efficiently we need to conduct a series of laboratory feeding tests to compare all the wheat lines we have to select those which are most effective and thus are worth testing in the second phase of the work where we will conduct (more expensive) field trials. The main pest species in arable environments are thought to be grey field slugs, so this is the one we need to focus in on to ensure the limited funding available yields the best return on investment.


2. How do you positively ID a Field slug against two other very similar species:-
This can be difficult when you first start looking at slugs, but you will soon get your eye in. A good starting point is a useful web links run by the John Innes Centre in Norwich:
Grey field slug | John Innes Centre (jic.ac.uk)

The general information and pictures available on various nature/wildlife websites will give you a feel to the variability of grey field slug itself (e.g. see the galleries pages on the following site (but there are others):-
Natuturespot.com

More pictures of different species can be found on a website run by Bayer Crop Science
Grey Field Slug (bayer.co.uk)

Finally, there are some pictures of various species on our own SLIMERS web site.


3. How much does it matter if I accidentally send you the wrong flavours of slug (eww):-
To be honest, this is always going to happen, so do not worry too much if one or two slip through, we can always filter them out. It will be very helpful if you try to take out as many of the non-grey field slugs as possible before sending, however. As you can imagine at certain times when the weather is right, we can have a lot sent in to sort through and this has to be done quickly to ensure we are caring properly for the incoming Molluscs and not keeping them waiting around. However, we shall not complain if a handful of the wrong species are posted in – even experienced experts can make a mistake or two when collecting in the field!

….and finally, you are right of course they do like a beer - one of their more endearing qualities!

Thanks again for your questions.

 

[KMcDH]

Hi Chris, Great to have you on board as one of our slug scouts.

In response to questions, You are right the grey field slug at the moment can be harder to spot at this time of year. The grey fields adults are about +-4-5cm, much smaller the Arion species (one of them being the Spanish slug) you are finding which can easily grow up to 15cm. There are abundances of both, but sometimes you will find the one slug species will be more prominent in certain habitats. I know that in my own garden I have one side that I go to for Arion species and the other side for the grey field slugs.

For our experimental work we will need to stick to the chosen species for each different experiment. I know for the wheat trials they are after the grey field slugs as these are the biggest pestiferous problem when it comes to growing wheat at its most vulnerable stage (early growth stages) The grey field slug is the main slug that is able to withstand much colder temperatures so are present in large populations at the time of germination of wheat. Therefore, the species is a particular good test species to use in the slug resistant wheat trials.

However after saying that, in my experimental work I will be later working with the large Spanish slug using multispectral cameras looking a plant response to damage from different species. The Arion species are sometime impossible to distinguish from each other, in fact previously we had to dissect in order to inspect them internally as the have different organs and this was the only way for positive Identification.

I have attached a picture of the very helpful book with very good illustrations and guides on slugs with the picture of the Grey Field slug- Derocerus reticulatum. Best advice, look for slugs between 2 and 5cm. They come in various shades see guide often dependent on which colour offers more protective camouflage on the particular vegetation available in the area from predation. Main thing to look for is a speckled grey small slug. But to be honest we are happy to receive the slugs even with a few misidentified ones. So just give it a go.

Last point on your party slugs. Many slugs are a big part of the nutrient cycle system, and they are attracted to and break down decomposing litter. This is possibly why they are so attracted to the smell of the beer with its fermenting yeasty smell. Your leopard slug sounds like it may have had too much beer and now attacking concrete like a crazy slug at the kebab shop. Though I have no scientific proof that slugs can get jolly on beer.

Thank for your help and we look forward to your slug contributions.

 

[skye @ bofin]

#FunFactFriday

Meet the grey field slug, a.k.a. Deroceras reticulatum! Although they are most often grey with blotches they can range in colour from white to almost black.

Did you know that they can be found almost everywhere, apart from dune systems or mountains?

 

[Chris _]

Ok thank you for an image of a p1ssed slug at the kebab shop, that image I will see in my dreams. I have 3 captive field slugs, am thinking of keeping them awhile to breed them up so I can reach my quota. Last checked I could not find the smallest one so I am thinking one of them may be my psychotic leopard slug. We shall see if I end up with only one. If so, letting that beastie loose in the garden again, munch away boyo.

 

[skye @ bofin]

#FunFactFriday

Time-traveling slugs? Not quite, but scientists at Oxford University have unearthed a half-billion-year-old fossil that's changing what we know about slug evolution!

Here’s an explanation of their findings from SLIMERS slug scientist Prof. Keith Walters (@Repwal) of Harper Adams University: “The fossil (Shishania aculeata ) lived on the sea floor about 514 million years ago and the lower part of the animal appears to have been naked with a muscular foot, somewhat like some Molluscs alive today.

“Molluscs today vary widely from clam-like bivalves - to snail and slug-like gastropods - to highly complex octopuses or squids and the less well-known aculiferans which have complex multicomponent skeletons,” he says.
“The ancestor of all living Molluscs is thought to have had a single shell, but the fossil found by these scientists tells us about a point in the evolution of the group before the appearance of a shell.”

Read the original article here.