Search Tools for Mollusks by Habitat

Mollusks have the most diverse body plan of any phylum, and they have successfully colonized land, fresh to brackish water, and every nook of the ocean (including the air above!). While only two classes—gastropods (snails, slugs, and semi-slugs) and bivalves (clams and mussels)—have managed to leave the ocean entirely, they have done so many times. Some groups live in brackish or semi-aquatic habitats, and some species are amphibious. Even within the same family or genus there can be species that are freshwater, brackish, marine, and/or terrestrial. This is fascinating from an evolutionary and physiological standpoint, but it makes searching en masse for them on iNat rather difficult.

To solve this problem, I have created several collection projects under the umbrella project Non-marine Mollusks of the World:

Using the above project ID numbers or titles and customized search URLs, you can search for mollusks by habitat and location, such as:

You can also use exclusion filters to search for marine groups, but note that this will also include coarsely IDed observations unless you add a high rank filter. For example, here are the marine mollusks of the United States IDed to family or below:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=1&taxon_id=47115&not_in_project=158737,162044,162190&hrank=family&subview=map
See that there are observations in the middle of the continent: these are either misIDed or observations that should be casual (fossils or shells brought inland). Or there could be an indexing issue (as I also discovered).

Disclaimers:

  • Because of the impressive adaptations of many species, it is often difficult to assign habitats to brackish, amphibious, and semi-aquatic species.
  • I have mostly used the habitat information on MolluscaBase, but they have some errors. The ones I could confirm I avoided.
  • Brackish species were left out of the above projects, so they may show up in exclusion searches.
  • Taxon changes will alter what is in these projects. I will try to stay on top of that.

Let me know if you see any errors, and I will fix them.

I don't see any need to follow these projects unless:

  • You think I will post from the projects (which I don't plan on doing).
  • You want to give admins (me) access to obscured coordinates. Knowing precise locations is often necessary for conservation of these groups. I am not currently doing research on these at the moment, but having them available to researchers would be helpful.
  • You want to show the world your overwhelming support for these wonderful animals. :)

How can you help?

  • Let me know if you have any better icon or banner photos I could use for the projects. I thought a Lampsilis lure would be neat.
  • Use these tools to add IDs (I am more than willing to help people that want to learn more; I'm sure others feel the same way).
  • Add observations of these under-represented groups.
  • Manually add observations to the Living Bivalves project.
  • Spread the word about how cool these animals are.

Tagging some top users who might be interested:

Terrestrial Gastropods
Observers (observations) Observers (species) Identifiers

@maelan51
@reiner
@cedric_lee
@angus10
@natael51

@frank375
@pliffgrieff
@igor117
@openlabnz
@benhutchins

@kevin474
@bernhardhausdorf
@mattparr
@huzi0131
@invertebratist

Freshwater Gastropods
Observers (observations) Observers (species) Identifiers

@data_nerd
@coreyjlange
@jeffgarner
@nmacelko2
@maelan51

@coreyjlange
@jeffgarner
@jesseholifield
@frank375
@rob_palmer

@bernhardhausdorf
@kevin474
@invertebratist
@tasty_y
@gparosenberg

Freshwater Bivalves
Observers (observations) Observers (species) Identifiers

@pintail
@jeffgarner
@data_nerd
@redgarter
@jesseholifield

@jeffgarner
@jesseholifield
@wildlandblogger
@dbarclay
@ksullivan

@amr_mn
@sam10turner
@redgarter
@pdsmith
@martinmandak

Marine Mollusks
Observers (observations) Observers (species) Identifiers

@uwkwaj
@adrian2370
@anudibranchmom
@predomalpha
@nicklambert

@uwkwaj
@dpom
@slebris
@tgosliner
@nicklambert

@invertebratist
@hsini_lin
@anudibranchmom
@predomalpha
@ben_travaglini

Just looking at the tops of the leaderboards misses a lot of specialized observations and expertise, especially in under-represented groups and regions, so thanks to all who take the time to investigate the wonderful world of mollusks!

Publicado el marzo 31, 2023 12:31 MAÑANA por thomaseverest thomaseverest

Comentarios

Great projects! It is going to be quite helpful. I have been doing a similar thing for general observations in NZ (separating them based on habitat such as marine and freshwater), but it really sucks when I have to consider about taxa that live both in marine and freshwater in their life cycles such as eels.

Publicado por invertebratist hace 12 meses

I have a growing interest in and documentation of freshwater clams and snails, and I am truly grateful for the establishment of this gathering.
I hope more wonderful activities will be done in inaturalist in the future. I will do my best to record oriental freshwater clams centered on Korea.

Publicado por pintail hace 12 meses

Terrific projects Thomas, and just in time for spring ...

Publicado por mattparr hace 12 meses

An extraordinary project !!! I will do my best to identify even more molluscs on this project.

Publicado por natael51 hace 12 meses

Great project! Thank you very much for your work. I'll let you know if I see any errors.

Publicado por maelan51 hace 12 meses

Great projects!

Publicado por kevin474 hace 12 meses

Great projects Thomas!

Publicado por coreyjlange hace 12 meses

Thomas! You Rawk dude! Cant wait for things to unfreeze :)

Publicado por data_nerd hace 12 meses

Fascinating project! I noticed that you said, "I have mostly used the habitat information on MolluscaBase, but they have some errors. The ones I could confirm I avoided." I'm one of the editors for MolluscaBase, so if you let me know of errors I can correct them. I've reviewed the habitat classifications for Mollusca in working on this paper: https://peerj.com/articles/13139/ estimating how many terrestrial species of Mollusca have been named. Problem areas include Truncatellidae, Assimineidae, and Ellobiidae (as stated in Table 5 of that paper), where it's often not clear which habitat area to assign.

Publicado por gparosenberg hace 12 meses

Thanks all, glad to have others who are excited about these things!

@gparosenberg Yes delineating habitats in those groups were pretty tricky, and I took inclusions/exclusions to the species level where needed. I don't remember most of the errors, but they usually involved a higher level taxon including or not including a habitat that was indicated lower down. For example, Trochidae is labelled as fresh (along with Trochinae and Clanculus), but no species are. Not sure if that has anything to do with Monodontia ringens being labelled as fresh, and now it's accepted under Clanculus. Gibbula striata and Phaneta everetti are also labelled as fresh, but they have an uncertain status. That's the only one I can remember at the moment.

Publicado por thomaseverest hace 12 meses

@thomaseverest Somethings are just miscoded--there are four separate habitat flags that have to be entered for each name, and sometimes one just gets out of rhythm and says "yes" instead of "no". That seems to be what happened with Gibbula striata and Monodonta ringens so I corrected them. The original description of Phaneta everetti https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28555688, however, indicates that it is correctly coded as freshwater, so the classification in Trochidae is probably wrong. It was named in Valvatidae, but until someone reexamines the type material, it will remain uncertain.

Publicado por gparosenberg hace 12 meses

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