Mussel of the Month

UMMZ 209186. Lake Butte de Morts, Wisc. F.C. Baker! August 1920.
(type of L. fragilis lacustris F.C. Baker)

Leptodea fragilis has been on our minds recently, and so we have decided to finally honor it as a Mussel of the Month.

We were recently reminded that Leptodea fragilis is a weird outlier when it comes to fecundity and glochidium size. Compared to most other amblemines, L. fragilis produces many, many tiny glochidia. This species (and many others) are discussed in an excellent new review paper by Wendell Haag (2013).

Leptodea fragilis was also featured in work done by students of the Graf Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Two posters were presented at the College of Letters and Science Undergraduate Research Symposium: "Curation of the Daniel J. Bereza Collection of freshwater mollusks at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Phase I" by Caitlin Luebke, and "A preliminary study of the biogeography of freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionidae) in Wisconsin, USA" by Ryan Pappas. Leptodea fragilis came up as one of those odd mussel species that straddles the Interior-Great Lakes divide in the Wisconsin and Fox rivers. The specimen figured here was collected by F.C. Baker (1928) on the Lake Michigan side. There is an interesting post-glacial biogeographical story that needs to be explored here!

Classification:

Phylum Mollusca
Class Bivalvia
Subclass Palaeoheterodonta
Order Unionoida

Family UNIONIDAE Rafinesque, 1820
Subfamily AMBLEMINAE Rafinesque, 1820
Tribe LAMPSILINI von Ihering, 1901

Genus Leptodea Rafinesque, 1820

Species Leptodea fragilis (Rafinesque, 1820)