Critically Endangered
Pale lilliput naiad
Toxolasma cylindrellus
Pale lilliput naiad is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Toxolasma cylindrellus, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Range and habitat
This species is endemic to the United States. It has experienced a great range reduction and is currently found only in the Paint Rock River drainage in northern Alabama and southeastern Tennessee. Pale lilliput naiad, the pale lilliput naiad, pale lilliput pearly mussel, or pale lilliput, is a freshwater mussel, an aquatic bivalve mollusk in the family Unionidae, the river mussels.
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
The pale lilliput has been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 since 1976. The Alabama Aquatic Biodiversity Center (AABC), a state-run facility near Marion, Alabama, has bred the pale lilliput in captivity and released young mussels into the Paint Rock River to bolster wild populations. As of 2026, reintroduced populations had grown numerous enough that AABC director Paul Johnson said the species may soon be eligible for delisting from the endangered species list.
Pale lilliput 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 Pale lilliput naiad, Wikidata item Q507332. 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.
