Field Guide

These diminutive mollusks are the smallest of Missouri’s freshwater mussels.

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

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.

Like the pink heelsplitter and fragile and pink papershells, the bluefer uses freshwater drum as a host.

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.

Of Missouri’s two species of freshwater shrimp, the Mississippi grass shrimp is by far the most common and widespread.

Of Missouri’s two species of freshwater shrimp, the Ohio River shrimp is certainly the rarest. It was thought to be extirpated from our state but was rediscovered recently in the Mississippi River.