What are the natural enemies of the golden apple snail?

The golden apple snail is a type of harmful snail that causes serious damage to aquatic plants and xerophytic vegetation near water bodies . It has good adaptability to the environment, strong resistance to adversity, a varied diet, and extremely fast reproduction. If it is not controlled in time, it will cause serious harm to the local aquatic ecological balance. So what are the natural enemies of the golden apple snail? Let’s learn more about it below.

What are the natural enemies of the golden apple snail?

There are many natural enemies of the golden apple snail. There is a snail-eating kite in Africa that is the natural enemy of the golden apple snail. The Chinese soft-shelled turtle, duck, Asian scissor-billed stork, black carp and other native Chinese species are also natural enemies of the golden apple snail. However, it is impossible to control the number of golden apple snails by relying on these natural enemies, because they cannot keep up with its reproduction speed.

How to prevent and control golden apple snails?

1. Agricultural prevention and control

(1) Artificial capture: Before the hibernation or spawning period of the golden apple snails, the adult snails in ditches, rivers and farmlands are manually captured and their eggs are removed.

(2) Water-land rotation: When water-land rotation is adopted, such as converting rice fields into vegetable fields, the golden apple snails will suffocate and die due to lack of water.

(3) Tidying up ditches: Tidying up ditches, clearing silt, and exposing the snails that are preparing to hibernate to the air can effectively reduce their density through exposure to sunlight, low temperatures, and suffocation due to lack of water.

(4) Blocking the spread of golden apple snails: In the downstream areas of the re-occurrence areas, barrier nets are installed at the entrances of irrigation channels or water inlets of rice fields to prevent golden apple snails from entering the fields with flowing water.

2. Biological control

Biological control mainly adopts the technology of raising ducks in rice fields, which can not only use biological methods to eliminate golden apple snails, but also increase the comprehensive agricultural income. It is a good way to kill two birds with one stone. The specific technical point is to use ducks to eat snails after ditches and rice transplanting. The time for releasing ducks is 7-10 days after rice transplanting to the end of rice heading stage. Select small and medium-sized immunized ducklings at the age of 30 days. The stocking density of ducklings is 20-25 per mu.

3. Chemical control

Chemical control is currently the main effective method for controlling mollusks such as golden apple snails. Currently, the registered pesticides for the prevention and control of golden apple snails include metaldehyde, snailicide, snailicide ethanolamine salt, etc. If 70% snailicide wettable powder 30-40 g/mu is used for spraying or poison soil method, there should be a water layer in the field. Golden apple snails and other snails will become dehydrated after one day of ingestion or contact, and the golden apple snails will die after three or four days.

In general, as one of the 100 malignant invasive alien species in the world, the harmfulness of the golden apple snail must be taken seriously. Although it has many natural enemies, the control effect is not ideal. Therefore, chemical control, agricultural control, biological control and other work should be actively carried out during the production process.