How this invading snail can save coffee from destruction

Have you ever heard of coffee rust? It is a disease that attacks the most economically important coffee trees in the world. Since the 1980s, occasional outbreaks of this fungus have  harmed coffee production  in the Americas, sometimes  doubling or tripling its price.  And the problem has been getting  worse since 2008 , requiring huge investments of resources to combat it.

A new discovery raises an intriguing possibility about controlling the most expensive disease that affects coffee trees and is packaged in a small shell. According to  recent research  at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, garden snails of the species  Bradybaena similaris can consume large amounts of coffee rust before the disease can harm the plant. Just put a snail on a leaf covered with rust and it will be able to snatch 30% of the fungus in 24 hours.

Although coffee rust has known predators and pathogens,  gastropods – snails and slugs – have never been among them. There is also little evidence of  slugs that eat other types of phytopathogenic fungi . In addition, this appears to be the first record of a change in the diet of garden snails from plants to fungi.

However, this possible biological control, a disease management tactic with the use of other organisms, has an obstacle:  garden snails   are usually invaders and also diseases in several plantations. But the researchers may have found a way to keep the snails’ diet focused on coffee rust.

Trace of excrement

Zachary Hajian-Forooshani, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, and his advisors John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto, were conducting field research in the green central mountains of Puerto Rico in 2016, when they saw thin trails of live orange snail excrement clinging to the part bottom of the broad, green leaves of the coffee trees. The color of the excrement perfectly matched that of the coffee rust.

Curious, the researchers collected samples of the garden snails and the native Caribbean snail of the species  Bulimulus guadalupensis , which frequently divided the leaves of the coffee tree. The group left each snail species isolated overnight with leaves containing coffee rust in a controlled laboratory environment. After 24 hours, only the garden snails had eliminated the coffee leaf rust.

The following year, the group returned to the same coffee plantation to carry out further experiments. This time, when collecting the snails, they noticed a great abundance of  Lecanicillium lecanii , a fungal parasite and known enemy of rust. The coexistence made them question whether garden snails consumed both fungal rust and its pathogen, which is a well-known mycoparasite.

In the following image, a normal leaf of coffee contaminated with the rust fungus next to a leaf that apparently had the orange rust spores eliminated by the snails. It is possible to observe an orange trail of snail droppings on the left edge of the leaf on the right. PHOTO BY ZACHARY HAJIAN-FOROOSHANI

But deciphering this three-way relationship is complicated. The leaves of coffee plants with more rust spots also showed more mycoparasites  L. lecanii . Thus, the snail’s appetite may be concentrated on rust, with mycoparasites  L. lecanii being  mere spectators, or it may be a little of both alternatives.

Thus, the team collected coffee leaves contaminated with rust, but this time, some that also harbored mycoparasites L. lecanii were included  . Again, they left each snail with a sheet of coffee in dark containers for 24 hours.

A statistical analysis of the snail’s eating habits indicated a significant preference for leaves that contained the rust fungus accompanied by mycoparasites  L. lecanii . In addition, snails seemed to consume more rust when the leaves had a greater abundance of mycoparasites.

Hajian-Forooshani explains that many organisms can modify behaviors and the way they express them when faced with a new situation.

“This concept is generally accepted as true due to the spontaneous emergence of diseases around the world and the unforeseen interactions between invasive species and biological control agents in ecological communities around the world,” says Hajian-Forooshani.

The coffee guilds

The relationship between coffee rust, garden snails and mycoparasites  L. lecanii  may be an example of a phenomenon called “ intraguild predation ”, in which a predator consumes prey infected with a pathogen. Theoretical research has  suggested that intraguild predation may serve to prevent disease outbreaks.

The intraguild interaction can stabilize the population of mycoparasites and provide better control or suppression of coffee rust in the long term, says  Stacy Philpott , a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who specializes in agroecology, biodiversity and biological control of coffee diseases.

“This could be an important ecological role played by the snail,” says Philpott, who did not participate in this study. His laboratory has witnessed a similar intraguild relationship for the protection of coffee through interactions between ants and two insects that feed on plants: aphids and mealybugs.

Cochineal insects and aphids feed on coffee leaves. Ants, in turn, collect the sugar excreted by these insects and protect them from other predators. Although the relationship may seem harmful to the coffee tree and farmers often confuse these insects with diseases, ants are often aggressive with other, more harmful herbivores, and, in the end, their relationship is beneficial to the plant.

The irony of garden snails that provide an agricultural service by eating rust on coffee leaves is that the snail itself is considered a critical agricultural disease, which devastates citrus crops, vineyards, vegetable, cabbage and mustard plantations. -Brown all over the world. For this reason, among others, the researchers interviewed for this article recommended great caution when exploring the use of invasive snails as a biological disease control agent.

At the moment, little is known about how garden snails can affect the ecosystem. For example, the snail eats mycoparasites along with rust, but what if it consumes a large amount? Could it allow the rust to grow faster and spread to larger areas than before, destabilizing the coffee plantation ecosystem?

“Classic approaches to disease control often fail to consider this complexity, causing major natural disasters,” said  Estelí Jiménez-Soto , an agroecologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who has conducted extensive research on biological control measures and coffee culture . It is also unclear whether this intraguild predation could be applied as a biological control throughout Puerto Rico or even outside the island.

Hajian-Forooshani says that more field research will be conducted to assess whether the consumption of coffee rust by gastropods is widespread in rural properties on the island and throughout Latin America.

During their last visit to Puerto Rico, the researchers noticed some other slugs, not yet identified, with what appeared to be coffee rust spores inside and which also left bright orange droppings. There is a possibility that coffee rust is more widely consumed by gastropods than previously believed and that this phenomenon has simply gone unnoticed by the scientific community until now.

Another important question is whether the rust spores consumed by snails remain viable after being excreted. If spores can survive and spread, snail predation may be of little use to coffee growers (and coffee lovers).

However, if this discovery results in a viable form of biological disease control, it would certainly be welcome. Other rust control methods need to be constantly adjusted to keep up with the fungus’ increased resistance to pesticides and fungicides. This is where snails could offer an advantage.

“It would be difficult to develop resistance in return for being eaten,” says Hajian-Forooshani.

Source: National Geographic Brasil Photos by Zachary Hajian-Forooshani