Critically Endangered
Birdwing pearlymussel
Lemiox rimosus
Birdwing pearlymussel is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Lemiox rimosus, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The greenside darter (Etheostoma blennioides) is an important host species for the birdwing pearly mussel's glochidia larvae.
Range and habitat
The birdwing pearlymussel is a rare species of freshwater mussel in the family Unionidae, the river mussels. This aquatic bivalve is native to Tennessee and Virginia in the United States. Its range has declined over 90%.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
The mussel attracts the darter with a lure that looks like an aquatic snail.
In crisis
This mussel remains in three rivers in Tennessee and Virginia, the Duck, Clinch, and Powell Rivers, having been extirpated from many more. It is now extinct in the state of Alabama. Failed efforts to transplant the birdwing pearly mussel and the Cumberland monkeyface pearly mussel (Theliderma intermedia), also endangered, to local streams brought an end to construction on the half-completed and long-contested Columbia Dam on the Duck River in 1983.
Birdwing pearlymussel 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 Birdwing pearlymussel, Wikidata item Q3016501. 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.
