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Article History

Received: 19 April 2020

Accepted: 8 February 2021

First Online: 4 March 2021

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: No permissions were needed for animal collection because <i>Helix pomatia</i> and <i>Cornu aspersum</i> were obtained from a commercial dealer. Lymnaea stagnalis does not fall under the German Animal Protection Act §8 and is listed as “Least concern” under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN’s) list of threatened species. Furthermore, we did not collect animals in a foreign country, so no further licenses were necessary. Since all experiments carried out in this study include non-cephalopod molluscs, this work is also exempt from regulations outlined by the University of Mainz Ethics Committee. We applied the 3R principles (replace, reduce, refine) in all of our animal work. To minimize pain of the snails, we first anesthetized them on ice for 20 min and subsequently sacrificed them by quickly cutting off the head.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.