Snails in Soybeans?

As a field agronomist, you see all sorts of interesting things in fields and never know what you may come across. I was checking out a soybean field last week that had some bare spots that obviously happened earlier in the growing season. The field had been really, really wet early in the growing season, but the bare spots were on the higher ground. As I was looking for any symptoms that might indicate what happened in the field, I started noticing snail shells in the bare spots in the field, but only in the bare spots. I've seen and heard of slug injury early on in soybeans, but snails?

After checking with another field agronomist and an entomologist, all of us agreed that this was a first! It's hard saying if the snails were the cause of the problem or if maybe they moved in after the soybeans had already died. You just never know what you might come across.