Connecticut State BioBlitz 2016, mollusks

The CT State BioBlitz happened on Friday June 3 and Saturday June 4 in East Hartford, which is inland, and not on the coast, therefore (in theory at least) no seashells.

I was there trying to find mollusks. I was there with Jason Michael Crockwell -- berkshirenaturalist. iNaturalist founder Ken-ichi was also there, plus a whole bunch of other terrific iNaturalist folks. We all did sterling work.

This BioBlitz went extremely well. The team of 180 scientists broke the previous world record by a couple of hundred species, with a total that was not far off three thousand, and that is not counting the bacteria, which will add another 145 thousand!

http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/connecticut-state-bioblitz-2016-east-hartford-ct

The freshwater mollusks were pretty great, and thanks to Jason's exceptionally sharp eye, we found quite a lot of species. We got unexpected help from Laura Saucier of the State Government, who not only ID-ed all the beat-up river mussel shells we collected, but she was also able to find three more species, two of them State-Listed. So, all together our freshwater total was about 15.

We found a State-listed Pleurocerid water snail, which was an very elegant novel taxon for myself and Jason.

On land we searched for slugs and land snails, but did not do as well as we could have done, because of the prevailing seasonal dryness. We found about 10 land species though.

Here are the icons for some of the mollusk species that we found:

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=6011&taxon_id=47115&verifiable=any&view=species

We found it virtually impossible to identify the species in the Amber Snail family Succineidae, and tiny newborn slugs were also too difficult for us.

I did find a valve of one big old marine species right next to the river, but I have to assume a human brought it there, possibly as stuffed clams for lunch?

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/3383017

Working flat out for 24 hours was tiring, even though I did not stay up and search all night like many people did, but in the end this BioBlitz was extremely interesting and highly rewarding.

Publicerat 7 juni 2016 00.53 av susanhewitt