Phantom cave snail
Encyclopedia
The phantom cave snail or phantom cavesnail (Pyrgulopsis texana) is a species of very small freshwater snail
with an operculum
, an aquatic
gastropod in the family Hydrobiidae
.
basin, Texas, the United States.
Freshwater snail
A freshwater snail is one kind of freshwater mollusc, the other kind being freshwater clams and mussels, i.e. freshwater bivalves. Specifically a freshwater snail is a gastropod that lives in a watery non-marine habitat. The majority of freshwater gastropods have a shell, with very few exceptions....
with an operculum
Operculum (gastropod)
The operculum, meaning little lid, is a corneous or calcareous anatomical structure which exists in many groups of sea snails and freshwater snails, and also in a few groups of land snails...
, an aquatic
Aquatic animal
An aquatic animal is an animal, either vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most or all of its life. It may breathe air or extract its oxygen from that dissolved in water through specialised organs called gills, or directly through its skin. Natural environments and the animals that...
gastropod in the family Hydrobiidae
Hydrobiidae
Hydrobiidae, common name mud snails, is a large cosmopolitan taxonomic family of very small freshwater snails and brackish water snails that have an operculum, aquatic gastropod mollusks in the clade Littorinimorpha.- Distribution :...
.
Distribution
This species is endemic to the lower Pecos RiverPecos River
The headwaters of the Pecos River are located north of Pecos, New Mexico, United States, at an elevation of over 12,000 feet on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in Mora County. The river flows for through the eastern portion of that state and neighboring Texas before it...
basin, Texas, the United States.
Further reading
- Dundee D. S. & Dundee H. A. (1969). "Notes Concerning Two Texas Molluscs, Cochliopa texana Pilsbry and Lyrodes cheatumi Pilsbry (Mollusca: Hydrobiidae)". Transactions of the American Microscopical Society 88(2): 205-210. JSTOR
- Cole G. A. (1976). "A New Amphipod Crustacean, Gammarus hyalelloides n. sp., from Texas". Transactions of the American Microscopical Society 95(1): 80-85. JSTOR.
External links
- http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=G00X
- http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/chihuahuan_freshwater.cfm