Fauna Europaea: Mollusca - Bivalvia.
1Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain.
Biodiversity Data Journal
|August 28, 2015
Summary
Fauna Europaea is a comprehensive database of European land and freshwater animals, detailing scientific names and distributions. This paper focuses on European freshwater bivalves, including imperiled species and invasive ones like the zebra mussel.
Area of Science:
- Zoology
- Biodiversity Informatics
- Malacology
Background:
- Fauna Europaea is a public web service indexing scientific names, synonyms, and geographical distributions for European land and freshwater animals.
- The project encompasses over 230,000 taxonomic names, significantly exceeding initial projections, and represents a collaborative effort by numerous European specialists.
- It serves as a standard reference for diverse users in science, government, industry, conservation, and education.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present data on European freshwater bivalves within the Fauna Europaea framework.
- To summarize taxonomic and biological information for key bivalve families and species.
- To provide a comprehensive list of current estimated families, genera, and species of European freshwater bivalves.
Main Methods:
- Data compilation from the Fauna Europaea project, focusing on Mollusca-Bivalvia.
- Inclusion of data for five specific families: Margaritiferidae, Unionidae, Sphaeriidae, Cyrenidae, and Dreissenidae.
- Tabulation of taxonomic information, including families, genera, and species, with basic biological details.
Main Results:
- The paper includes data for 55 species of European freshwater bivalves across five families.
- European freshwater bivalves are categorized under the Orders Unionoida and Cardiida, with specific superfamilies detailed.
- Highlights include imperiled freshwater mussels (Unionoidea), the genus Pisidium (Cardioidea), the Asiatic clam (Corbicula fluminea, Cyrenoidea), and the invasive zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha, Dreissenoidea).
Conclusions:
- The Fauna Europaea database provides essential taxonomic and distribution data for European fauna, including critical groups like freshwater bivalves.
- Understanding the taxonomy and distribution of bivalves is crucial, given the conservation status of some groups and the impact of invasive species.
- This work contributes to a standardized reference for European freshwater bivalve biodiversity.
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