Heat shock proteins and survival strategies in congeneric land snails (Sphincterochila) from different habitats

Abstract

Polmunate land snails are subject to stress conditions in their terrestrial habitat, and depend on a range of behavioural, physiological and biochemical adaptations for coping with problems of maintaining water, ionic and thermal balance. The involvement of the heat shock protein (HSP) machinery in land snails was demonstrated following short-term experimental aestivation and heat stress, suggesting that land snails use HSPs as part of their survival strategy. As climatic variation was found to be associated with HSP expression, we tested whether adaptation of land snails to different habitats affects HSP expression in two closely related Sphincterochila snail species, a desert species Sphincterochila zonata and a Mediterranean-type species Sphincterochila cariosa. Our study suggests that Sphincterochila species use HSPs as part of their survival strategy following desiccation and heat stress, and as part of the natural annual cycle of activity and aestivation. Our studies also indicate that adaptation to different habitats results in the development of distinct strategies of HSP expression in response to stress, namely the reduced expression of HSPs in the desert-inhabiting species. We suggest that these different strategies reflect the difference in heat and aridity encountered in the natural habitats, and that the desert species S. zonata relies on mechanisms and adaptations other than HSP induction thus avoiding the fitness consequences of continuous HSP upregulation.

Snails in the sun: Strategies of terrestrial gastropods to cope with hot and dry conditions

“…Mizrahi et al () even found that evolution selects snails for reduced Hsp70 expression in harsh environments. Also, Mizrahi, Heller, Goldenberg, and Arad () found reduced expression of Hsps in the desert‐living Sphincterochila zonata and interpreted this as being indicative of a strategy that avoids the fitness consequences of continuous Hsp upregulation. Similar results have been published for other stress‐tolerant populations of numerous taxa in addition to snails (Arts et al, ; Bettencourt, Feder, & Cavicchi, ; Haap & Köhler, ; Köhler, Eckwert, Triebskorn, & Bengtsson, ; Köhler, Zanger, Eckwert, & Einfeldt, ; Krebs & Feder, ; Lansing, Justesen, & Loeschcke, ; Sørensen, Dahlgaard, & Loeschcke, ; Sørensen, Michalak, Justesen, & Loeschcke, ; Zatsepina et al, ).…”

Antioxidant defense and stress protein induction following heat stress in the Mediterranean snailXeropicta derbentina[Pulmonata, Hygromiidae]

“…Furthermore, in X. derbentina, seasonal and intraspecific variations in Hsp70 induction could be found, leading to different survival strategies in X. derbentina populations (Dieterich et al, 2013;Troschinski et al, 2014). Generally, it is known that Hsp induction is used as an important survival strategy in land snails living under extreme environmental conditions Mizrahi et al, 2012). In this context, Hsps are essential for 'repairing' partly malfolded proteins due to damaging effects of ROS, so an upregulation of these proteins may be important for an organism's cellular fitness (de Oliveira et al, 2005).…”

Biomarker-based assessment of the muscle maintenance and energy status of anurans from an extremely seasonal semi-arid environment, the Brazillian Caatinga

“…A decrease in HSP expression in aestivating frogs goes hand-in-hand with the suppressed protein synthesis in the muscles and may reflect lower protein turnover rates during aestivation [41,52]. Similarly, other aestivating species such as land snails also decrease HSP expression during quiescence [53, 54] and sharply increase it during arousal [55].…”