Critically Endangered
Rough pigtoe pearly mussel
Pleurobema plenum
Rough pigtoe pearly mussel is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Pleurobema plenum, recorded as Critically Endangered.
The bivalve
Freshwater mussels sit in the bed of a river and filter water. A larva must hitch a ride on a host fish; a dam can break that cycle.
Freshwater mussels bury in river sediment and can live for decades if the host fish and the current remain.
Range and habitat
Rough pigtoe pearly mussel, the rough pigtoe pearly mussel or rough pigtoe, is a freshwater mussel, an aquatic bivalve mollusk in the family Unionidae, the river mussels. This species is endemic to the United States.
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
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Rough pigtoe pearly 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 Rough pigtoe pearly mussel — often a short stub, Wikidata item Q1054570. 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.
