Diario de thomaseverest

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:

• Terrestrial Gastropods of the World (158737)
• Freshwater Gastropods of the World (162044)
• Freshwater Bivalves of the World (162190)

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

• The freshwater bivalves of Alabama: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=19&project_id=162190
• The freshwater and terrestrial gastropods of Germany: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=7207&project_id=158737,162044
• The non-marine mollusks of Thailand: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6967&project_id=158737,162044,162190

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:

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!