Critically Endangered
Club naiad
Pleurobema clava
Club naiad is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Pleurobema clava, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Club naiad, the clubshell, club naiad or clubshell pearly mussel, is a freshwater mussel, an aquatic bivalve mollusk in the family Unionidae, the river mussels. Clubshells prefer clean, loose sand and gravel in medium to small rivers and streams, burying themselves in the bottom substrate to depths of up to four inches. Once settled in, clubshells are long-lived, living possibly up to 50 years.
Range and habitat
This species is endemic to the United States. Prior to its endangered status, clubshells could be found in the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee River systems, and Lake Erie drainages. Currently, even so, these mussels can be found in the United States in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
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
Clubshells are endangered, most likely because of agricultural run-off, industrial waste, mining of streams for gravel and sand, impoundment and the proliferation of the exotic invasive species the zebra mussel. At the time of its listing under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 in 1993, P. Clava was likely limited to no more than twelve rivers or streams.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Club naiad is Critically 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 Club naiad, Wikidata item Q1054605. 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.
