Endangered
Arcidens wheeleri
Arcidens wheeleri
Arcidens wheeleri is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida), recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
The shell is somewhat rounded or oval, up to 112 millimetres (4.4 in) long by 60 millimetres (2.4 in) wide by 87 millimetres (3.4 in) high. The shell is brown or black, lustrous and iridescent. The nacre is part pink and part white or bluish.
Range and habitat
This species is native to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in the United States, that have only four or five small, isolated populations. Of the remaining populations, only the one located in the Kiamichi River in Oklahoma is viable. Arcidens wheeleri is a freshwater mussels in the family Unionidae, the river mussels.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Freshwater mussels bury in the bed and live for decades if the river still runs and the host fish still spawn.
In crisis
Arcidens wheeleri is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Arcidens wheeleri, Wikidata item Q20031386. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
