Critically Endangered
Orange-footed pimpleback mussel
Plethobasus cooperianus
Orange-footed pimpleback mussel is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Plethobasus cooperianus, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
It has bumps on the posterior part of the shell and the foot is orange in live specimens.
Range and habitat
Orange-footed pimpleback mussel, the orange-footed pimpleback mussel or orangefoot pimpleback, is a rare species of freshwater mussel in the family Unionidae, the river mussels. This aquatic bivalve mollusk is native to the Tennessee, Cumberland, and lower Ohio Rivers in the United States, where its distribution has declined over 70%. The mussel mainly lives in deep, fast-flowing rivers, especially with gravel or sand on the bottoms.
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
Pollution of the waterways has led to the decline of this and other mussels. The zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) is a widespread threat.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Orange-footed pimpleback mussel 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 Orange-footed pimpleback mussel, Wikidata item Q1055021. 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.
