Field Guide

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.

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

The mapleleaf spawns in the summer, using catfish as a host.

Unlike most other freshwater mussels, this species is hermaphrodic: An individual mussel can be both male and female.

The plain pocketbook is one of the most common and widespread mussels in our state. It is oval, relatively large, and occurs frequently.

This widespread species is one of the few Missouri mussels successful in shallow ponds and lakes.

The uniform shell thickness and hard, white nacre made this mussel a favorite for button manufacturing, in the days before most buttons were made of plastic.

The longpincered crayfish is large and colorful, with very long, slender, blue-green pincers that are studded with prominent yellowish knobs. It is restricted to the White River basin in the Ozarks.

Gilled snails are one of two main groups of aquatic snails in Missouri (the other group is the "lunged" snails). Gilled snails, or prosobranchs, breathe with gills and possess a hard trapdoor-like operculum. They are most common in the Ozarks.