Critically Endangered
Pegias fabula
Pegias fabula
Pegias is a monotypic genus of freshwater mussels in the family Unionidae.
Appearance
The outer surface of the shell is light greenish or dark yellowish, but it is often eroded off, leaving the shell chalky whitish in color.
Range and habitat
The species is native to the Cumberland and Tennessee River systems in the United States, where it is present in streams in North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee.
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
There are between six and twenty remaining populations, most of that contain fewer than 500 individuals. The main threat to the species is bad water quality, especially due to acidic mine drainage. Other threats include oil and gas exploration, road construction, channeling of the rivers, logging, agriculture, and pesticides.
Pegias fabula 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 Pegias fabula, Wikidata item Q3013530. 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.
