Californian Molluscs Identification project
Hi all. I have recently finished going through and correcting IDs of most of worldwide Cypraeoidea, Triviidae, and Janthina spp., most of New Zealand marine molluscs, some of NZ terrestrial/freshwater molluscs, majority of South Korean marine molluscs and some of Australian marine molluscs.
Now I have started working on American marine molluscs, especially those from California because there are quite many good observations needing corrections or confirmations.
I have tagged top identifiers of Californian Molluscs excluding nudibranchs.Please leave a comment below if you are able to help, so you will be subscribing to this journal (you will be notified when changes are made) which I will keep adding links of observations by commenting which need more IDs.
Because it needs two or more identifiers to agree with corrected ID most of time, I cannot do it alone and your help is quite crucial. You don't need to be an expert of Californian molluscs when adding IDs as long as you think the ID is more accurate (does not mean to be more precise) than the previous one.
I will be adding comments below frequently with links of observations needing IDs. Please add identifications to these observations.
Although I am not very experienced with Californian molluscs, I know about them relatively well from iNat, and I am happy to correct anything if I was wrong.
Also please use this journal or your own journal for any discussion about IDs, so everyone can see what is happening. In general iNat can work very very well when multiple identifiers are working together.
Thank you!
Saryu Mae
@anudibranchmom @thomaseverest @jannvendetti @pliffgrieff @susanhewitt @oceanicadventures @mcduck @jeffgoddard @hsini_lin @hfb @tlawson @kueda @extraneus @kestrel @skatingflamingo @sultana
@predomalpha @mattparr @pileated @jpsilva @phelsumas4life @chloe_and_trevor @gparosenberg (feel free to mention any other marine mollusc identifiers!)
Comments
(1) Correction between Lacuna unifasciata, Lacuna marmorata and Eulithidium spp.
17 Aug, 2022
Lacuna marmorata suspects, originally IDed as L. unifasciata*:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36088144
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/51705094
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/51867931
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/54960380
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/63009427
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9341905
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/101630369
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/101630414
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/117763369
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68256867
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1236783 (Unsure)
Eulithidium pulloides suspect, originally IDed as L. unifasciata
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/102068598
FYI: juvinile L. unifasciata for comparison: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4961762
FYI: worn L. unifasciata for comparison: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69649105
Hello. Yes I am willing to help with this.
I will help as I can. Thank you, @glycymeris.
sounds good
If anyone is going to do any wide scale IDs (which I have done, and I encourage), I highly recommend it be based in sound literature. If you would like to do mollusks, start with the bivalves because they were very thoroughly overhauled in Coan et al. (2000). I have already IDed all West Coast bivalves, so it shouldn't be too much work to go through and double check I did things correctly.
If you prefer to stick with other marine mollusks, things are a bit dicey. McLean (1969) isn't a bad start for SoCal, but it's pretty dated and not at all comprehensive. There's also Lindberg (2007), but it's also not comprehensive and doesn't explicitly cover SoCal. The other problem with the three resources I've listed so far is that they're in books, which makes them harder to acquire.
I have a variety of links on my profile, but I probably won't be IDing any marine groups other than dove snails, muricids, and olives, because those are the only groups that have really been studied well (to my knowledge). I am happy to add other groups to my list when I find the literature.
If you want to work on terrestrial gastropods, we actually have some pretty good literature that's available online (also on my profile). I could use some help with banana slugs. Freshwater gastropods not so much, but we can make do. I honestly think it's easier to ID these groups than their marine counterparts, so I may just stick with those.
Finally, if you are going to ID a group, please commit to IDing all new observations that come in. I've managed to add a lot of bivalve species to the CV this way, so in the long run it's best to commit to what you can identify indefinitely.
Yes, I can help a bit! I've gone through Neverita a bit, especially egg collars, as they are commonly IDed to species when there isn't enough to be sure, in my amateur enthusiast opinion. There's still probably a bit to do there. Also quite possible that a lot of SoCal Donax IDs are wrong.
Almost all Donax IDs should be right, although I don't know if I've seen any true D. californicus.
@glycymeris thanks for including me & also starting with the wee snails I struggle to ID :)
Oh! Interesting @thomaseverest that is quite possible
@thomaseverest -- I think these three obs are the real thing as Donax californicus:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/susanhewitt?utf8=✓&q=donax+californicus&search_on=&quality_grade=any&reviewed=&identifications=any&captive=&geoprivacy=&taxon_geoprivacy=&place_id=&swlat=&swlng=&nelat=&nelng=¬_in_place=&taxon_name=&taxon_id=&day=&month=&year=&order_by=observations.id&order=desc&rank=&hrank=&lrank=&taxon_ids%5B%5D=&d1=&d2=&created_on=&site=&tdate=&list_id=&filters_open=true&view=map
Happy to help where I can.
Thank you everyone!!! I encourage all identifiers to try get other identifiers involved in when adding many IDs in whatever a way which suits it (journal, project, discord etc..) to make the work more efficient and to have meaningful discussions. Please feel free to comment links here (or in your own journal) when you think there are large number of observations of a certain group needing IDs.
@thomaseverest I am happy to involve in identifying shelled gastropods like bivalves, however Banana slugs are a bit out of what I can tell differences clearly. There are several very helpful slug identifiers on iNat so I suggest mentioning them in your journal if possible.
I really appreciate the links for the literature- they are very useful. Personally, quite a lot of foreign terrestrial gastropods look identical to me while I can tell apart most marine molluscs easily, so probably it is better for me to concentrate on marine species. Some of American freshwater gastropods really need IDs urgently for conservation purposes, but they are indeed very difficult to obtain information about.
Yes, I regularly go through new observations of groups I have been checking, like Cypraeoidea.
I'm happy to help, but I don't know the West Coast fauna as well as the East Coast fauna. I've been working through older identifications of marine mollusks from Newfoundland through Texas to fill in the live-dead attribute, which pulls them into the Eastern Seaboard project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/eastern-seaboard-mollusks. We are over 75% research grade identifications in the project.
Identifiers, it's helpful if you can fill in the live-dead attribute. Mollusk shells that one finds on beaches can be hundreds or thousands of years old, so flagging live-collected ones helps to establish current distributions.
By the way, we have Markus Huber's collection of worldwide bivalves in Philadelphia, which were the basis of his two volume Compendium of Bivalves (2010 and 2015).
Banana slugs can only be IDed by range, so they're not difficult. My extensive identification of them seems to have unintentionally encouraged other slug IDers to focus on other groups. Not necessarily a bad thing, but just showing the unfortunate dearth of IDers.
https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/32164-a-note-on-banana-slugs
Thanks @gparosenberg, I have joined the project. I will try identifying whatever I can.
Pseudopusula californiana suspect, originally IDed as Pusula solandri
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/102107337
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/107783948 (←Unusual specimen)
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