FJSH SPRINGS POND Snall " " REPORT
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·. " " " FJSH SPRINGS POND SNAlL " " REPORT .. .. " f,. ·~ (\ 0 .. 2 Statu~ Report o n Fish Spri ngs Pon d Snail Taxon name: LymnaPft <Hinkleyia) oil?bryi Hemphill, 1890 Common name: Fi~h Springs Pond Snd>l Family: Lymnae1dae StAll-'s where taxon occurs: Utah Curr ent Feder al 5talu ~ : Candi date for endang~rcd or lhrcatcn e d status RPronomended Federal !Status: No li !iting Aulhor of report: Owtght W. Taylor , Dept . of Guolog y , Oregon State UnivcrGity , Corvalll5, OR 973 3 1-5506 Or"i gi nal da t e o f r eport: No vember 2;'1, ! 986 3 Table of Contents I. Specie~ Information 4 1. Cl~,sification ~nd nomPnclaturc 2. Present legal status 6 3 . Description 6 4. G~ographical distribution 7 5. Environment and habitat 0 6. Current land ownership and management responsibility 9 7 . Management practice~ and ~xpericnce 9 JI. AssesGment and Recommendations 10 B. Status change 10 9 . Conservation recommendati ons 10 III . Information Sources 11 10. Sources o~ information 11 IV. Authorship 1·.:> 11. Initial authorship 15 Literature Ci t£1d 16 4 I . SPECIES INFORMATION J. Cla~~~~ication and nomenclature. A. Species. 1. Scientific Name. a . Lvmna~a CHinklPyia) Pilsbryi Hemphill , 1890. b. Original description: Hemphill , H. , 1890, NPw form~ of weslarn limniade~: Tile Nautilus , vel. 4, pp. 25-27; Limnpca CLPptolimnogtd pil s bryi, p. 25. c. Type specimen: 62293, Academy of Natural Sciences, Phil adel phi.:>. Other spPci nu;ms , col 1 ect.Jd by R. H. Russell in 1970, arc mostly in the Department of Zoology, University of Arizona , Tucson . 2. Other name combinations. 1872. Lcptoiimnea, n . sp.?: Cooper, 1871-1872, p . 172; Fish Springs, "Nevada"; collected by H. Hemphill. 1911. Galba pilsbryi <Hemphill): Bal:er, p. 254, pl. 4, fiQ::; A, D; redescription, il l u stration of type speci men , type locali ty specified as "Fish Spring , Nye Co. , in approximatel y lat. ' ' 38. 45 1 lomg. 16. 30;'' r ecl assified in Galba, ::;ubgenus Simpsoni,:,. 1951 . Lymnaea oilsbryi Hemphill : Hubendick, p . 199; ''Fish Spring , New County, Nevada, U.S.A. ; " classified as a synonym of Lymn¥ea humilis Say. 1963. 5tagnicola CHinkleyia> pllsbryJ <Hemphill>! Taylor ct al ., s p . 265, pl. 2, fig. 1; i l l u,;tration of type, rcdescriplion, correction of original locality from Fish Spr ings, ''Ne vada •• to Utah. 3. Common name : Fish Springs p ond snai l. 4. Size of subgenus : Two other species of the subgenus Hi nkl eyia are r e cognized (Taylor , Walter-, and Burch, 1963>: Lymnaea caperata Say, widespread over northern North Amer ica; and bvmnaea monta neosis Baker, of the western Uni ted States and adjacent Canada . The number- o f species of the world- wide genus Lymnaea in the br-oad sense may be of the order of magnitude of one hundred. B. Family class ificati•on. 1. Family name: Lymnaeidae. C. Major group: Pulmonate sn ail , -~rder Hygrophila. D. ' History of knowledge of species. Hemphill <18901 recorded that "1 collected a few specimens of this interesting shell in the month, of June, 1868, at this locality [Fish Spring, '' Nevada '' ], after a long a nd hard day's ride of 40 miles horseback.'' Th e first mention in print of the species was by Cooper (1871-187.21, who cited it as Leptolirnnaea? Probably it was Cooper ' $ '· identif ication tha t led Hemphill to publish the species as i n subgenus Leptolimnaea . Hemphill presented specimen s (numbe r unr ecorded> to the Cali f orn ia Academy of Scie nces <Cooper , 1871-1872, p. ' 17 1>; these wer e prPsumably destroyed in the great San Francisco fire of 1906. To date, o nly thr ee specimens of Hemphill's o r iginal c ollection are kno wn to 6 survive; these are in the Academy of Natural Sciences .. Philadelphia. The few publications until 1971 w~re based on printed sources only, or on Hemphill ·s material, with no new material for study. Russell (1971) recorded the fauna of the Fi~l• Springs area , with emph~sis on Lymn APa pilsbryi. He found-- empty ~helle only, on tht' surface of the ground cast of (Erater Sprin~ lt is probable that the species h ad been exterminated already. E. Alternative taxonomic treatments. There is no current consensus as to ranking of the various groups within the family Lymnaeidae. More conservative authors • ~~~h a5 Hwb~ndi~k (1951, 1978) c l assify th~ species of the family in a comprehensive genus Lymnaea , without even any subordinate groups. Others such as Starobogatov ( 1967' 1970) recognize a comprehensi v'e genus with many . subgenera. Sti 11 others <Burch, 1982) classify the species of Lymnaeidae in several distinc~ genera .. The intermediate course is adopted in this report, and so the Fish Springs pond snail is Lymnae~ <Hinklevial eilsh~yi Hemphi 11 ( 1890). 2. Present legal status. The U.S. Fish and ~ildlife Service <Federal Register, May 22, 1984) has listed the species as a candidate for threatened or endangered status. 3. Description. A. General nontechnical desc~iption. 7 The shell of the Fish Springs pond snail is narrow and elong~t~, up to 5/8 inch long, 1/4 inch wide , wilh 6 1/2 whorls and ov&te aperture less than 1/3 the ,_hell l"nglh. Diagnostic features are th~ &hell sculpture of sp1ral incised lines , that are the site of raised fine bands of the outer organic (non- calcAreous) canting of the s h ell . Thc,_c raiGcd bands aru ~vident only in fresh sp~cimPns . 4. Geographical di&tribution. A. Geographical range. The Fish Springs pond snail has been reported only from Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, Juab County , Utah, in an area • shown on U.S. Geological Survey Fish Sprirygs SW quadrangle <196'7) 1:24000, within a line~r distanc e of about 1. 5 miles, in sees. 23, 24 , 25, and 26, T. 11 5., R . 14 W. Figure 1 shows the known / sites. B. Precise occurrence. Only one population, now extinct, is indicated by the known reports and specimens. The precise locality where the original specimens were collected by Hemphill in 1868 is not known. Russell 11971) fou nd the species in 1970 as empty shells only <but some still fres h>, on the ground just east o ·f-- C~ter ----Spring--:J--- in an area r ecently drained and burned over. Sampling for the present report in July, 1986, yielded rare specimens at stations 7, o, and 12 <Figure 1>, from Thomas Springs to--- the ~outh_ end of the Fish Springs compl@x . All spec1men~ collected were long dead, as indicated by wear on the shel l & and the absence of lh~ outer . 8 periostracum. Evidently the speci es wa s found at one time more widely t han n ear Crater Spring, perhaps over muc:h of the Fi.:;h Springs complex . C. Biogeographical a n d phylogenetic hi.:;tory. There are twa probable interpretat ions of the taxonomic status of the spec:iP.s . One is that it is not a biol ogically distinct entity, but an ecophenotype or ''habitat form" of t he widespread species Lymnaea capPrata Say, induced pres um ably by quality of the water. One would expect t hat simi lar habi tat f orms of b.- caperata, or a t l east other samples transitional to b.· rilsbryi, would have been f oun d if this explanation were correct. Another ·interpretation IS t~at' Lymnaea pilsbryi is a valid species . Against this is t he virtual l ack cif other sp~cies of the genus that are so locally res tricted in distribution; the absence of · isolating . mechanisms that would lead to such narro'w geographic restriction; and the short time span of only a few thousand years in which the species evolved since Fish Springs emerged 'from the shrinking waters of Lake Bonneville. The ·other two species of the subgenus Hinkleyia, Lymnaea c:aper ata and b.. montanensis, arc both known from Pliocene or even Mi ocene deposits, making the rapid evolution of b.· pilsbryi r em~rkable by contrast. Neither alternative· c;m be rejected out of hand, nor can either be validated, because the population <species or habitat form?) is extinct. 5. General environment and habitat. ·. 9 Russell (1971) thought that lhe 16~ ~hell~ of 'ymnogA P-ilsbryi thut he found were from a ~hallow , semipermanent mar~h. This habitat Js similar to that of the nearest relalive, Lymnace rnp~rata , lhal lives in seasonal water bodies 1ncludang shAlluw ponds, marshes,. ditches und fluctuation. The rare specimens of b.· pl 1 sbryi found in the prc~cnt 5urvey provide no add1t1onal information about thP sp.,ci es. 6. Current land ownership and manAgement. The urea is entirely within lhc Fish Springs National W1ldlife l<efugo. 7. Management practices and experience. Priority in management has been given to enhancement of habitat f or waterfowl, and none to preservation of natural habitat. The spr1ng outflows and sources have all bePn develuped for maximum contribution to areas of standing water in ponds and mar' shes. Ditching and draining has eliminated entirely the shallow, semipermanent marshes around the spring sources that were the critical habitat of the species, and has eliminated al l east one and pcrhaps two other species former! y present. The!>e other species are Gyraulus circumstciatus (Tryon>, found as a s1ngl e empty shell at Fish Springs (Station B, Figure ll; and Fgrrissia californica CRowell>, found by Russell east of Crater Spring where Lymnaea pil~bryi occurred. Comparison of the species found at Fi!>h Springs with those at Twin Springs, in the Dishop Springs area~~ mi les lo the 10 southwest in Snaka Valley is rev_ealing <Table 1).