There are relatively few species of slugs (snails without shells) that are native to Canada. Slugs are very slow moving, and vulnerable to dehydration, but over hundreds of years People have moved slugs here from other parts of the world in soil with garden plants, on the bottoms of boxes and pallets of shipped goods, and even on automobiles and trailers.

Many questions about slugs in Canada have not yet begun to be answered - like how long has any particular species or population been here, where did it come from, and has it changed over time from its parent population? As far as we can tell, there don't seem to be any investigations into the detailed identities of any of our introduced slugs.

Most slugs are not garden pests, and all slugs are fascinating! Hermaphroditic in reproduction, they mate with each other in the male stage and become female as eggs develop. This makes dissection an intriguing challenge! In the workshop, Ulrich told some interesting accounts of his research in the species of Limax in Europe, instructed us in the biology and life histories of slugs and how to collect and raise them, and had us all practice the proper techniques of preservation and dissection.

Unlike snails whose hard shells are easily measured, slugs have relatively few external features that can be depended upon for identification. Mistakes in identification can easily be made, so people who are curious about slugs and want to be able to tell them apart must use every clue they can find - from carefully recorded observations of location, date, time, and weather conditions, to photography and illustration of living individuals and dissection of carefully preserved specimens at particular life stages. Ulrich taught us that people who raise slugs can learn a lot by constant observation of slug behaviour, and can even learn to tell species apart by subtle differences in scent. We learned that slug anatomy as seen in dissection varies with maturity of the slug being examined, and Ulrich emphasized that all life stages should be studied before a species can really be known. So our work is cut out for us!

Ulrich has donated over 60 preserved samples of identified European slugs to the BMNHC as a reference collection for dissection and comparison with Canadian specimens. We have been given a good start in the study of slugs in Canada, and the field is wide open for amateurs to contribute knowledge to the science. For a start, some of our dissections of the genus Arion during this workshop have revealed new mysteries, as there is nothing published that seems to correspond to what we found. He writes: Concerning the subfuscus-clade while at the workshop we have been able to show that in Canada there is more than one species, which was thought by former authors to be subfuscus... Now we will have to work out if the 2 clearly different species recognized are subfuscus and fuscus in the sense of the authors or if there are further species... Lots of work to be done!!!