These trends could be explained in at least 3 ways. (1) Infection causes the snails to not produce spines and to become wider. (2) Spiny and narrower snails are more likely to die when they become infected. (3) Spiny and narrower snails are more resistant to infection. The changes in phenotype observed are unlikely to be adaptive for either the host or parasite and probably represent physiological by-products of the host-parasite relationship.