Thread by @Gnarly_Larvae

THREAD: How taxonomic misidentifications/uncertainty can haunt you.

While I'm not named here, an unpublished chapter from my dissertation is the source for the confusion surrounding the 2010 record for the Ozark Pryg. Today...I'm not sure I actually found it. 1/N

https://twitter.com/tierramussel/status/1103068981185806336

*record scratch* Narrator's Voice "You're probably wondering how I got here.

Summer of 2006 I conducted a survey of freshwater snails of the Ozark Plateau in Arkansas as part of my dissertation . I spent the summer living out of my Ford Ranger with my dog named Trapper...

...a Rhodesian Ridgeback and pretty much the best dog ever, (don't @ me). Even though he's not the subject of this thread, I'm going to post random pics of him in the field with me just for fun so even if you're not into the snail story you can still enjoy the dog pics.

We (me and Trapper) surveyed 171 sites that summer and that's not counting the all of places we went to and couldn't get access to the water. I would generally go out for a week to ten days, go home for a few days, then head back out again and repeat....

Most nights we'd camp wherever was close in the National Forest or at boat ramps, some nights we slept in WalMart parking lots. That summer, and my later surveys in the Ouachita Mountains, was one of the best times of my life. A good dog, the open road, and creek walking, heaven

After I identified the snails collected, I wrote and submitted the report. Reading it now 13 years later, it makes me cringe, but I remind myself that I was a 25 year old and this was my first real grant report submitted to an actual agency. The project was funded by a SWG grant.

The report can be found here.
wildlifearkansas.com/materials/Proj…

As I state in the report, I did not identify the Hydrobiidae (the family to which the Ozark Pryg belongs). Hydrobiids are tiny, like 5mm, and they are best identified by examining their genital morphology. They're out of my league.

Fred ID'd one specimen I collected as Marstonia ozarkensis (Ozark Pryg) and I listed it in the report it as such. This was odd bc 1). the record was far out of the known range of the species and 2). it had been considered extirpated from AR for decades, but more on that later.

In 1915, A.A. Hinkley published three descriptions of species he collected the previous year from the North Fork of the White River at Norfork, AR (although he misspelled it as Norfolk).

He described the Ozark Pryg, another hydrobiid now considered extinct, and the Arkansas Mudalia which is likely extirpated from AR but still persists in MO. The original paper can be found here repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand…

I likely also misidentified the Arkansas Mudalia in the Ozark Snail survey report but that's a different thread, but one that would somewhat mirror this story. Snails are tough and I was young, naïve, and maybe a bit brash.

The river A.A. Hinkley visited was very different from the river we now know. In the late 1930's and early 1940's, a dam was built on the North Fork of the White River at Norfolk for flood control. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfork_D…

The same story can be told at thousands of locations around the world. Build an impoundment and you will cause extirpation or even extinction of local fauna. All three species Hinkley described were likely extirpated from AR with the construction of Norfork Dam.

The Ozark Pryg seems to have persisted upstream of the dam for a few more decades in at least one location in MO but was never common there. I'm not sure when the last time it was seen there but people (not me) have looked for it there since have not found it.

There are ongoing surveys of the NFWR in MO funded my MDC and they're looking for ALL freshwater snails, so it may turn up, but most of us are doubtful it will.

I defended my dissertation in 2010. That included my 2006 survey work, hence why 2010 is often cited as the last record for the Ozark Pryg. I wrote about my uncertainty over the identification in the discussion, but I left the name in taxa lists and maps and...

...I regret that. I should have called it Marstonia sp. and left it at that.

I'm still not sure why Fred Thompson called the snail I collected M. ozarkensis. It may have just been a Marstonia and he just picked the geographically closest species to call it. I was a 25yo fresh PhD student and Fred was one of the world experts on the group...

...so I didn't really question him on the ID. He was a giant in the field and I had other, unrelated chapters as well as a new job at EKU to worry about at the time. Fred had health issues, including suffering a stroke, and passed away in 2016...

You can read an obituary written by @jslapcin here. I didn't know him well, but I really wish I would have picked his brain more about these specimens and so much more. We collectively lose so much knowledge when taxonomists like Fred pass.

researchgate.net/profile/John_S…

I don't know the fate of the specimens I sent to Fred, and there are other records at FLMNH for the genus in AR that have not been identified to species level, but also that collected far outside the North Fork of the White River.

Are those records and my specimen all the Ozark Pryg? Maybe, but maybe not. Are they potentially new, unrecognized, and imperiled species? Possibly. I don't know. No one does. I think FWS was right to declare it extinct because...

I don't see how you can manage something you can't find and identify. FWS doesn't have experts in every group of organism working for them. Sometimes there are not experts to turn to, or those that might be of assistance may consumed by other equally imperiled/deserving taxa.

Throwing money at an issue doesn't work if there's no one there to catch it and suing them doesn't solve this problem.

"Haunting" might be an exaggeration here, but I've had to address the ID issues of this specimen (and the Arkansas Mudalia) dozens of times. Maybe in the future I can just point people to
this thread.

The lesson here is that we need to train, AND EMPLOY, more taxonomists and fund more surveys and systematics work to better assess conservation issues like this. I personally don't think pointing fingers at federal agencies is useful in this case.

These snails are hard to find and difficult to identify, even by "experts". FWS did the best they could with the information they have. END.

Supplemental Material: Here's me and Trapper in 2003 when I was an MS student and in 2013 on his 10th birthday when I was a tenure track Associate Professor. Yeah...I still had the same shirt and cargo shorts, but I was able to buy a better couch.

Additional supplemental material: Trapper passed in Jan. 2014. You can read the eulogy I wrote for him here. I consider it the best thing I've ever written. facebook.com/photo.php?fbid…

Also, shout out to my PhD advisor @hydroalan who helped me plan and fund this awesome research/experience/project/work/study/road trip/exploration.

Dang it, I missed an important section of this thread here. The next tweet should have said that I sent the specimens to Dr. Fred Thompson at Florida Museum of Natural History and he kindly sent me his identifications in return.