Critically Endangered
Fat threeridge
Amblema neislerii
Fat threeridge, the fat threeridge, is a freshwater mussel native to the rivers in southern Georgia and Florida.
Appearance
It possesses a dark brown to black outer shell. Its inner shell is bluish white to purple with an iridescent appearance. The shell is unique to mussels being inflated and also possessing approximately seven to nine prominent parallel ridges.
The mussel is usually less than four inches in length and also in its width.
Range and habitat
Fat threeridge, the fat threeridge, is a freshwater mussel native to the rivers in southern Georgia and Florida. It resides in shallow rivers in the muddy and sandy bottom of the river beds. This is due to critical shortages in water due to violent droughts, that are destroying their habitat, within the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system in Georgia and Florida.
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 was named an endangered species in 1998 by state and federal agencies and it is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Currently the population of these mussels is declining. Also, pollution from people and plants along the rivers, the disappearance of host fish and the introduction of other animals such as the Asian Clam have aided in their decline in population.
Even being listed under the Endangered Species Act did not bring much attention to this specific mussel.
Fat threeridge 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 Fat threeridge, Wikidata item Q308005. 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.
