Endangered
Coosa moccasinshell
Medionidus parvulus
Coosa moccasinshell is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Medionidus parvulus, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Coosa moccasinshell, the Coosa moccasinshell, is a rare species of freshwater mussel in the family Unionidae, the river mussels. This mussel is up to 4 centimeters long or occasionally larger and has a thin, fragile, dark brown or yellow-brown shell. The nacre of the shell is blue, sometimes with pink areas.
Range and habitat
This aquatic bivalve mollusk is native to Georgia and Tennessee in the United States, and has been extirpated from the state of Alabama. This mussel is native to the Mobile River drainage, where it was once sporadic but widespread. This species is rare except in Polk County, Tennessee, where it is locally common in the Conasauga River.
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
It is in severe decline, having been extirpated from much of the Coosa River system and all of the waterways in Alabama where it once occurred.
Coosa moccasinshell 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 Coosa moccasinshell, Wikidata item Q3015992. 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.
