Field Guide

The freckled crayfish is powerfully built, yellowish tan, with numerous conspicuous black spots on its pincers, carapace, and abdomen. It is largely restricted to the Courtois Hills section of the Meramec River basin.

The powerfully built devil crayfish is usually a uniform olive or tan, without obvious blotches or spots. It digs underground burrows, often with mud chimneys, and has a wide distribution.

The golden crayfish varies in color from olive green to golden yellow. Many body parts are trimmed with red. A dark band crosses the head just in front of the cervical groove, and another crosses the carapace at its junction with the abdomen. It's a wide-ranging species.

Often overlooked by people, but eagerly sought by fish, Missouri’s amphipods resemble shrimplike sowbugs. Scuds live in various aquatic habitats, and several species inhabit caves.

These small mussels use darters, a type of fish, as hosts for their young.

The fatmucket was a favorite species harvested for the button industry in the early 1900s.

The Arkansas brokenray only occurs in streams that flow south off of the Salem and Springfield plateaus, so it is found only in about the southern quarter of Missouri.

The butterfly is one of the most beautiful of Missouri’s mussels.

A common mussel in some areas, deertoe have decorative green markings.

A widespread mussel that relies on freshwater drum as host fish for the developing young.