Large and healthy snail (A) and its crop fluid (B), feces from field (C) or reared (D) animals are shown.

<p>Schematic representation of the <i>Achatina</i> digestive tract (E).</p

Match between bacterial communities comparing crop vs. feces (A) and wild vs. reared snails (B).

<p>Principal coordinates plots (PCoA) were generated using the pair wise unweighted UniFrac distances.</p

Distribution of sequences in bacterial phyla classified by the RDP Database (A) and proportion (B) of <i>Firmicutes</i> and <i>Bacteroidetes</i> in the crop and intestine (feces) microbiota of wild vs. reared snails.

<p>Clones were designated FC to indicate field-collected snails; RL, reared in the laboratory; C, crop; and I, intestine (feces). The datasets were compared against the following MG-RAST (metagenomics.anl.gov) metagenomic projects: Fish gut (4441695.3); Lean (4440463.3) and Obese Mouse (4440464.3); Red kangaroo (4461325.3); Capybara (4461352.3); Giraffe (4461358.3); Horse (4461321.3); Chicken cecum (4440285.3); Cow rumen (4441682.3) and Human (4440941.3). The sequences from planorbid snails <i>Biomphalaria pfeifferi</i> (FJ228890–FJ229104), <i>Bulinus africanus</i> (FJ228740–FJ228889), and <i>Helisoma duryi</i> (FJ229105–FJ229355) were obtained from NCBI dataset.</p