Talk:Lymnaea

Great article and fantastic photographs!! I'm hitting the e-mail alert button but all my comments are minor.

I fixed some small typos in the text, which I guess can be double-checked to make sure I didn’t change meaning. Other specific comments are below..

I got confused as to which are the nine ganglia—for example when the ganglia are not fused (like buccal) how does the terminology work-are there two buccal gangia or one?

[I love the figure in the ‘Snails can see quite well’ section!]

Figure 4 nicely summarizes a great deal of information but on my monitor it is hard to read some of the writing, even when I click the enlarge icon…for example in Fig. 4A the word ‘interneurons’ is hard to read..this does get better however when I click on ‘download high resolution version’…Fig. 4B is probably the hardest to read…the work ‘feedback’ is tough even when I have downloaded the high-resolution version..so are the names of the neurotransmitters, and the work ‘pericardium’…also in Fig. 4B-the peptides SEEPLY, EFLRIamide and pQFYRIamide are missing but perhaps this is intentional and due to lack of space?

I thank the reviewer for the positive comments. Typos: I found some more in the reference section and these have been corrected. 'The nine ganglia': I see the problem in the whole body withdrawal section and I have now added the words (excluding the buccals) on line 8 of this section. I think the initial description in 'Organization of the nervous system' with Fig. 2 are self explanatory. Fig. 4 The resolution of the images tends to be lost a bit on web-pages compared with the originals, but for a detailed look you can go to 'download high resolution version' after first clicking on the image. Everything is then very clear! I have now indicated this possibility by adding a sentence in the figure legend to help the reader(suggested by Paul Katz). Adding all the peptides in Fig. 4B would have 'overloaded' the figure and was intentional. I hope this is satisfactory.

                         Paul Benjamin

Reviewer B

This article sets a high standard. It very adequately and attractively provides both the interested lay and academic reader with sufficient information about the neurobiology and behavior of this pond snail, and is likely to pique the interest of some to further pursue the references. Aside from a few stylistic changes and typo corrections here and there, I can hardly improve it. A minor criticism (there's always a minor criticism) might arise from the actual strength of the article: it is so entirely Lymnaea-centric. The author has missed the opportunity to place the snail's lore in comparative context, relating the contrasts and similarities with other snails, and perhaps leeches and arthropods. This leaves the subject an open target for reviews (and perhaps misinterpretation) by less Lymnaea-interested authors.

Response to Reviewer B by Benjamin Thanks for making some corrections. It would have been nice to have put the Lymnaea system in a wider context but I was up against the length limit. I assumed that the other articles in the Scholarpedia compendium on Gastropod Neuroscience would allow a comparative approach by interested readers. My remit was to cover the Lymnaea system.