Leptoxis plicata Release

To the FWGNA Group,

As many of you are aware, Paul Johnson (current chairman of the FMCS Gastropod Committee) has been working for several years to artificially propagate Leptoxis plicata, the federally endangered pleurocerid snail endemic to Alabama's Black Warrior drainage. Earlier this week he wrote to inform us of the successful release of almost 5,000 yearlings back to the wild. He suggests that this may be the first release of an artificially cultured endangered freshwater snail in the United States. I think it may be the first anywhere in the world, ever. Congratulations, Paul!

Paul sent us an article from the Sunday edition of the Birmingham (AL) News which offers a pretty good overview of the project and is mostly accurate. [Paul's notations are in brackets.] We join him in thanking Paul Hartfield of the USFWS and Stan Cook of AL-DCNR for making this small but important step possible.

Keep the faith!
Rob


---------[Birmingham News 07/20/03]----------

At a Snail's Place
Scientists release critters to breed in Locust Fork
JERRY BAKER News staff writer

Hoping to reverse a trend that began decades ago, research scientists released 4,876 snails Saturday into the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River near Kimberly. It was the first of five annual releases planned in hopes of restoring the population of a federally endangered species. Though small, the plicate rocksnail is a cornerstone species upon which all the other animals living in the river depend, said Paul Johnson, a research scientist with the Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute. The snail lives beneath large, flat rocks and eats algae and organic matter; it is food for turtles and fish.

Sixty years ago, the half-inch-long snail was so plentiful in the Locust Fork that a person standing anywhere in the river's shoals would have a couple dozen snails under each foot, Johnson said. Now those snails are almost gone, victims of pollution and sediment washed into the river. Once found along the entire length of the river, their numbers have diminished so much that they are found in only a few shoals along a 20-mile stretch between Interstate 65 and U.S. 78, about 2 percent of their original habitat.

Johnson and several assistants carried the snails to the river in three one-gallon buckets in a cooler. He let the buckets sit for a while in shallow water to adjust their water temperature, then sprinkled the snails in an area where the water was a couple of inches deep. The released snails are the offspring of 100 he collected from the river in March 2002 from shoals near Sayre. Saturday's release is a result of five years of research and development, Johnson said. "This is aimed at trying to develop the techniques for restoring freshwater snails, especially in the Mobile River Basin," Johnson said. The Warrior River is a part of the Mobile River Basin. The basin is one of the most biodiverse in the world, Johnson said. It also is one of the most troubled. Of the 60 species of freshwater snails that have become extinct in North America, 42 of them are from the Mobile River Basin.

Eleven snail species are listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened or endangered, and eight of them are from the Mobile River Basin, he said [clarification - 11 listed species in AL only]. Sediment from development and strip mining along the rivers has washed into the streams and covered up the snails' habitat. Pesticides and herbicides also have contributed to snails' dwindling numbers, he said. The release site near Kimberly was chosen because Johnson said he knows snails can survive there. He found one snail after a couple of hours of searching a couple of months ago but came across none in a search last week.

Johnson will visit the river several times a year to monitor the snails. Each is marked with a one-millimeter tag affixed with dental cement, he said. The tags help researchers monitor the progress of the snails and ensure the same ones won't be used for breeding stock every time [clarification - adult broodstock was tagged, not the juveniles]. This fall he will release the 97 survivors of the original 100 he removed last year as breeding stock. He will put those back where they came from near Sayre [error - this was completed last year, and no adult mortality has been associated with 2003 propagation efforts].

Johnson plans to collect more each spring, and later in the summer he will release more. Johnson hopes to improve his technique so that about 10,000 1-and 2-year-old snails will be released each summer.

With conditions along the river improving, Johnson hopes his repopulation efforts will give the snail the boost it needs to survive. "They can take themselves out from the brink of extinction," Johnson said. "We've just got to give them a chance.

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How To Study and Collect Freshwater Gastropods

Some of you may be familiar with the classic AMU publication, "How To Study and Collect Shells." That 100-page booklet, last published (in its fourth edition) in 1974, was very popular among hobbyists and collectors of all backgrounds for years. It featured a nice little chapter on freshwater snails written by F. C. Baker in 1941.

Three years ago Charlie Sturm (of the Carnegie Museum) accepted the task of editing a new, completely updated version of the old chestnut. I was honored to be asked to contribute the freshwater snail chapter, following in the footsteps of one of my heros. I put together about ten pages of general background information on the biology, ecology, and conservation of our favorite animals, with tips on collecting and keeping them in aquaria, all aimed at a very general audience.

Alas, publication of this promising resource has been delayed for several years*. In the interim I have received many requests for information on freshwater gastropods from the public at large, and have occasionally furnished manuscript versions of my chapter to the outreach offices of various natural resources agencies, public school teachers, and so forth. So I've decided (with Charlie's permission) that the time has come to make the chapter generally available.

Dillon, R. T. (in press) Freshwater Gastropods. In Sturm, C.F., T.A. Pierce & A. Valdes (eds.), The Mollusks: A Guide to Their Study, Collection and Preservation. American Malacological Society, Pittsburgh, PA. [PDF]

Feel free to copy and circulate this document wherever it can do some good. It is citable as a chapter from a forthcoming AMS publication. I'll let you all know* when the actual booklet finally hits the presses.


*PS - Ultimately published in 2006:
The Mollusks: A Guide to Their Study, Collection and Preservation
http://universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581129300

Report from RTP

As many of you are aware, we enjoyed a marvelous three days in Raleigh-Durham at the FMCS meeting. I'm pleased to report that our plan to hold a freshwater gastropod workshop in 2004 has been approved by the FMCS Board. Almost all of the discussion at our gastropod committee meeting lunchtime Monday was devoted to kicking around ideas and plans for this most important event. We did squeeze in a bit of time to elect Paul Johnson as the new chair of the committee, and re-elect Ken Brown as co-chair. Congratulations Paul and Ken!

The following message from Paul is self-explanatory. Please send any feedback to Paul and/or me at your earliest convenience!

Dear FMCS Gastropod Committee Members,

My thanks to John Alderman, Judith Radcliff, the folks at NC-State for the terrific job hosting the 2003 FMCS Symposium. The NC State/DOT/DWRC staff did an outstanding job! I believe the final attendance for the meeting was about 250 people (a terrific total in times of tight state and federal budgets). In regards to the 2004 FMCS Gastropod Workshop, I am sending you this brief communication to obtain your feedback for the final location and program design. Please keep in mind the final program will vary, depending on where we eventually agree to hold the meeting. I need feedback as rapidly as possible, so that we can make the final arrangements. If we are required to hold the meeting in a hotel, we'll need as much time as possible make the reservations / arrangements (in fact, we're already behind the curve on this).

The basic format:

• A 1-1.5 day session on the identification of NA freshwater gastropods. This would cover the basic identification of NA freshwater gastropods to family and genus (excluding the Hydrobiidae). This would also tentatively include a session on soft anatomy.
• A half day session on the basic topics (biology, conservation, genetics, ecology etc. 30 min sessions).
• A session on a draft of the National Strategy for the Conservation of Freshwater Gastropods (30 min presentation - 1 - 2 hour discussion and comment period).
• Katherine Perez also offered to host a short (beginners) session on terrestrial gastropods.
• IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO ADD/CHANGE TO THIS BASIC FORMAT SPEAK-UP NOW!

Location. We have had five very kind offers to host the meeting - LET ME KNOW WHICH YOU PREFER. (1) Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. (2) Kevin Roe has offered to host the workshop at the Delaware State Museum, Wilmington, DE (about 1 hours drive from Philadelphia). (3) Libby Hartfield has offered use of the Mississippi State Natural History Museum in Jackson, Mississippi. (4) Chuck Lydeard has offered to host the meeting at the Univ. of Alabama conference center in Tuscaloosa, AL. (5) US Fish and Wildlife Service, NCTC, Sheperdstown, West Virginia.

Date: TENTATIVELY SET FOR MARCH 2004. If we hold the meeting at NCTC, the dates must be March 2-4, 2004. However, there are not enough rooms at the NCTC so attendees would be required to stay off-site. We will have to arrange the specific date depending on who host's the meeting.

Chuck Lydeard has told me that if we hold the meeting at the Univ. of Alabama - the participants will also be able to receive a "primer" course (pun intended) on phylogenetic sequencing and analysis with a little demonstration. Additionally, the folks at U of A will be happy to show us the computer morphometric analysis they are now using. Additionally a field trip to the Cahaba River could be planned, where you can see several federally listed snail spp. "in action". For several reasons, the U of A offer has my support, but I want to hear from you.

Thanks to all for your participation and input.
pj

Paul D. Johnson
Research Scientist I
Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute
5385 Red Clay Road
Cohutta, GA 30710
Phone (706) 694-4419
Fax (706) 694-3957

FWGNA, FMCS, AMS

To the FWGNA group,

I recently received an updated Gastropod Committee roster from Rita Villella Bumgardner, the secretary of the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society, and was pleased to note seven new names. Welcome all. This brings the total size of the FWGNA group up to 131.

I'm often asked about the relationship between the Freshwater Gastropods of North America Project (FWGNA), the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society (FMCS), and the American Malacological Society (AMS). And it occurs to me that this might be a good time to review.

The FWGNA project was born at an informal meeting of the AMS in Washington DC in July of 1998. I don't think any of us present at the Washington meeting realized that, just four months previously, the National Native Mussel Coordinating Committee had voted to form a society, the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society, and to broaden its interests to include gastropod conservation. In November of 1998 an FMCS group drafted bylaws which included a Gastropod Committee, with yours truly as Chairman pro tem. The FWGNA project then became an activity of the FMCS.

Our group has met twice with the FMCS (Chattanooga 1999 and Pittsburgh 2001) and again with the AMS this summer in Charleston, during my term as AMS President.

Here's the bottom line. You are not required to belong to any society or pay any dues to join the FWGNA group. Membership in the FWGNA is completely free. But if you want to go to the FWGNA meetings, practically speaking, you'll need to pay some dues somewhere.

The FMCS would certainly be a good choice! Approximately 37% of our 131 members belong to the FMCS, receive the (really first-rate) newsletter Ellipsaria, and look forward to a regular cycle of symposia and workshops. And as all of you should be aware, the next FMCS symposium is right around the corner, March 16 - 19, at the Sheraton Hotel in Durham, NC. Our FWGNA meeting is scheduled for noon on Monday the 17th.

Let me conclude with a bit of additional bookkeeping. Three folks on the recipient list of this message are not actually new members, but rather old members who changed email addresses and fell off my list. Another five of you are receiving this message at a new address. (That is, the address on my fresh FMCS roster looked more current than the one in my address book, so I changed it.) So please email me directly if you want to change your email address - my updates from the FMCS Secretary are annual at best.

Keep in touch, and I hope to see lots of you in Durham,
Rob

P.S. - I couldn't help but notice that a batch of you are a year (or more) behind in your FMCS dues! Come on, ladies and gentlemen, pay up! Email me if you're unsure of your status.

FMCS Meeting 3/03

The 2003 symposium of the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society is scheduled for March 16 - 19 at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Research Triangle Park, Durham, NC. The theme will be "Connections . . . A Focus on Habitat Conservation." John Alderman will be our host (aldermjm@mindspring.com).

If this third biennial symposium of the FMCS is anything like its predecessors in Chattanooga and Pittsburgh, registrants are sure to enjoy excellent papers, super social events, and great fellowship with comrades on the front line of mollusk conservation. There will be a meeting of the Gastropod Committee, probably on the 19th. Registration forms, details regarding accommodations, and a call for papers can be found at [link removed].

Note the following deadlines:

• November 30 - Submission of abstracts.
• December 6 - Applications for student travel awards.
• December 15 - Early Registration.
• February 28 - Hotel reservations.

Hope to see you all there!
Rob

Report from Charleston

I'm pleased to report that freshwater gastropodswere the marquee attraction at the 68th meeting of the American Malacological Society in Charleston last month. The scientific sessions commenced Sunday morning August 4 with a pair of plenary addresses on our favorite animals: Amy Wethington reminding us what marvelous models freshwater snails may be to address scientific questions of great generality, and Ken Brown & Paul Johnson highlighting their presently imperiled status.

These talks segued smoothly into the featured symposium of AMS 2002: "The Biology and Conservation of Freshwater Gastropods," a program of 15 talks ranging broadly across the ecology, evolution, and genetics of snails from Alberta to Zambia. Speakers included John Alderman, Art Bogan, Rob Guralnick, Matthias Glaubrecht, Steve Johnson, Eileen Jokinen, Chuck Lydeard, Bob McMahon, Doug Shelton, Jon Todd, Tim Stewart, Brian Watson, and others. The symposium was designed to build toward a meeting of the Freshwater Gastropods of North America project Sunday evening.

Minutes of that eventful gathering are appended below. If those of you who were present notice any additions or corrections to these minutes, please let me know. The bottom line from the Sunday evening meeting can be summed up in one word, however - decentralization.

The celebration of freshwater gastropods continued through AMS conference. There were seven contributed talks and ten poster presentations on freshwater snails Monday afternoon. And Tuesday August 6 featured a special session, organized by Amy Wethington, entitled "Pulmonates in the Laboratory." The eight invited presentations primarily involved Physa and Biomphalaria and focused on behavioral, morphological, and genetic questions.

A good time was had by all. For more details, the Program and Abstracts of all presentations at the Charleston meeting should be available soon as a PDF file from the AMS website:
http://www.malacological.org/meetings/past.php

Plans are currently in the works for a special issue of the American Malacological Bulletin featuring the freshwater gastropod talks given at AMS 2002. So keep in touch, everybody!


----[Minutes of the FWGNA Meeting 4Aug02]-----
Lightsey Conference Center, College of Charleston

Attending: Brian Watson, John Alderman, Jacquie Lee, William S. Rabert, Matthew Campbell, David Campbell, Lyle Campbell, Sarah Campbell, Kevin Cummings, Tom Watters, Scott Martin, Gary Rosenburg, Tom McCarthy, Beth Davis, Susan Bandoni Muench, Thomas Smith, Joseph Hartman, Eugene P. Keferl, Kathryn “Ellie” Sukkestad, Ken Brown, Andy Turner, Tim Stewart, Jay Cordeiro, Bob McMahon, Chuck Lydeard, Amy Wethington (Secretary).

Meeting convened at 7:00 pm by R. T. Dillon, chair.

The meeting opened with a presentation by Jay Cordeiro of NatureServe. NatureServe employs ecologists and contract specialists to identify, preserve, and protect biodiversity. All 50 states of the U.S., 10 Canadian provinces, and 12 LAC countries have agreed to share data. It maintains the “heritage status” (rarity and richness data) for an extensive list of organisms from the United States and Canada, with which it identifies potentially imperiled species and biodiversity “hot spots.” Its web site (www.natureserve.org ) features a database “Explorer” which is a rapid and easy tool for retrieving conservation information.

Discussion followed regarding the method by which heritage ranks may be revised or updated. There are a variety of different systems to convey conservation status. Heritage ranks are controlled by the states and can be different from global ranks if states disagree. NatureServe may list two rankings if there is a difference between a Heritage Rank and a Global Rank. The best way bring about a revision would be to contact states through their relevant offices directly.

There were questions regarding the reliability of the database upon which heritage ranks rest. The NatureServe data are based on published reports and museum records, which admittedly may be old and incomplete. NatureServe updates its information three times a year from each State’s Heritage data. But without question, new data on all species are welcome at any time. There is a mechanism on the website for the public to submit information directly to NatureServe. Regarding nomenclatural standards, usually a standardized source is used, such as Turgeon et al.

The chair thanked Jay for his contribution and moved to a slide presentation reviewing the history of the FWGNA project. Landmark dates have included the 7/98 establishment of the project at the World Congress of Malacology in Washington, the 11/98 formation of a gastropod committee within the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society, the 3/99 second meeting in Chattanooga, and the 3/01 third meeting in Pittsburgh. Some detail was offered regarding the NSF proposals of 11/99 and 11/00, which involved a large number of collaborators, and which ultimately were less than successful.

The large, centralized effort has proven difficult to jumpstart. Meanwhile, the symposium just completed has featured reports regarding successful local freshwater gastropod surveys ongoing in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi.

These considerations led the chair to offer a New Model for the FWGNA project. The talking points were as follows. (1) The effort should be decentralized. (2) Politically boundaries do matter. (3) Modern data are critical. (4) Local funding sources are important. (5) Central coordination should be at the database level.

The chair suggested that regionally-based individuals and small teams might be best positioned to conduct our inventory of the North American freshwater gastropods. Regional efforts might involve reviews of previously published reports, museum records, and state agency data, as well as the design of new surveys. State and regional funding should be sought, voucher specimens (in ethanol) deposited locally, and reports designed primarily to suit the needs of the resource agencies focused on particular watersheds and political boundaries. But in conjunction with these decentralized efforts, workers might send their databases in some standard format to a central office. And the central office might both coordinate with NatureServe, and (ultimately) compile a guidebook to the freshwater gastropods at the continental level.

Regarding identification problems, each worker should simply do his best with the references currently available. As long as voucher specimens are deposited in publicly available collections, any errors can ultimately be remedied.

The projected guidebook to the freshwater snails of North America should have nice illustrations and be easy to use. Since this work would not be intended as a scientific monograph, distribution maps might be offered at the continental scale and show only low resolution. The work would be multiauthored, including anyone with a significant contribution of data, with proceeds from the sale going to the FMCS.

A lively discussion followed the chair’s presentation. There was debate regarding whether the projected guidebook should feature broad ranges or more precise dots. Although dot-maps are certainly more helpful for management, concern was expressed that endangered species might become vulnerable to overcollection. Perhaps our mapping units should be HUCs, or counties, or dots 20 miles wide. It was suggested that detailed data might be reserved for the agencies, which could then regulate its dissemination. Amateur collectors are not the enemy, however.

There was also discussion regarding funding sources. In the last couple years, federal and state support for biotic surveys has become more difficult to obtain. One option is to design surveys that involve specialists in all freshwater taxa, not simply the gastropods. J. Alderman suggested a “King’s Challenge” mechanism, where large private benefactors might be interested in biodiversity surveys.

Noting the lateness of the hour (8:30 pm) the Chair turned the floor over to Gary Rosenberg (AMS Systematics Committee), for a review and discussion of database standards in systematic collections. As he did so, he made this final plea:

Any worker willing to survey his local freshwater gastropod fauna is encouraged to email Rob Dillon. Then do it! Don’t make me come over there.

Physa progress

F. C. Baker called Physa heterostropha “the most misunderstood mollusk in America.” Without question, the entire family Physidae has been a source of considerable frustration to me personally, since I collected my first batch as a child 30-40 years ago. The doggone things are everywhere, and all 40+ nominal species of American Physa pretty much look identical.

Now I’m happy to report that progress is being made. In the most recent issue of Invertebrate Biology, Amy Wethington, two undergraduates and I report that the most common species of Physa in North America is Physa acuta. Here’s the reference:

Dillon, R.T. Jr., A.R. Wethington, J.M. Rhett & T.P. Smith (2002) Populations of the European freshwater pulmonate Physa acuta are not reproductively isolated from American Physa heterostropha or Physa integra. Invert. Biol. 121:226-234. [PDF]

Yes, it appears that the most misunderstood mollusk in America, together with its more northern cognate, is not different from a Physa discovered in southern France in 1805 - a Physa which has since spread throughout the Old World, down to South Africa and out to Japan. Although it seems fairly clear that Physa acuta is a North American native, it was apparently first described in Europe. I think P. acuta may be the most common freshwater mollusk in the world.

This is the but the first salvo in an all-out frontal assault on the bastion of the Physidae. This spring Chuck Lydeard, Ellen Strong and I have been awarded a $400k three-year grant from the NSF to review the systematics of the entire family. Chuck and Amy will focus on a big sequencing effort, Ellen will work on the anatomy, and I’ll keep cranking out the breeding studies.

We’ve already collected almost a year of data on crosses involving the other major group of physids, those that Burch puts in the subgenus Physella. (Physa acuta, integra, and heterostropha are in the subgenus Costatella.) We’ve got good results from Physa gyrina gyrina, Physa gyrina aurea, Physa microstriata, Physa utahensis, and a population from Zion National Park. We’ve also piddled with Physa parkeri and Physa ancillaria in the past year. Just this spring we’ve begun new experiments with the Costatella group, including Physa virgata and P. hendersoni. You’ll hear more about all this research in Charleston next month.

So what’s the bottom line? The number of biological species of physids has probably been overestimated by an order-of-magnitude. The critters show tremendous phenotypic plasticity, in shell, life history, and any other respect you could name. The Charleston meeting will feature several talks focusing on phenotypic plasticity in pulmonate snails as well. We’ll keep you posted as this research progresses.

P.S. - You will notice that we do not use “Physella” as a genus. Jack Burch (1992) has moved Physella back down to subgenus rank, and we agree. See Burch & Jung’s “Freshwater Snails of the University of Michigan Biological Station Area” (Walkerana 6:85) for more.