Endangered
Dolphin Freshwater Mussel
Unio delphinus
Dolphin Freshwater Mussel is a bivalve in the family Unionidae (order Unionida) — Unio delphinus, recorded as Endangered and tied to Portugal, Spain, and Australia.
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
This species occurs in the Atlantic basins of the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco Dolphin Freshwater Mussel is a bivalve belonging to the family Unionidae.
GBIF currently lists 1,665 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.
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
Dolphin Freshwater Mussel is 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 Unio delphinus — often a short stub, Wikidata item Q14753692 and GBIF occurrence geography. 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.
