Chemical Analysis Plans for Slit-Shell “Milk”
Marine chemical ecology research technician Raphael Ritson-Williams of Ft. Pierce, Florida:
"We're going to take this (the slit-shell
snail "milk") back
to our lab and do chemical analysis on it to look for different
types of compounds that are in it, do extractions, and then hopefully
isolate some compounds. We hope to get a chance to come
back and test them (the isolated compounds) against crabs and
other things to see if they don't taste good so crabs wouldn't
eat them. Or they might be pheromones to find other snails
with, so you set a little trap out and see if other snails aggregate
around it and test it like that. But right now we're just
going to look at the chemistry (of the "milk")."