“Freshwater Snail Ecology in the Cahaba River” public lecture by Dr. Tolley-Jordan from Jacksonville State University, took place at Birmingham Botanical Gardens on February 16, 2017, at 7:00 pm. The speaker synthesized her whole presentation in this statement: “What to do without Keys? Unlocking the amazing biodiversity of Alabama’s freshwater snails and the worms that live within them”. Alabama is home to 173 of 516 species of North America freshwater gastropods, and home of 118(is) of the 162 species of freshwater periwinkles. Biology, being such a wide field, why does Dr. Tolley-Jordan chose to study snails? Snails are really easy to work with. In Cahaba River, snails are constantly there due to the fact that they do not have a lot of predators.
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Snails dominated the dry biomass of free-living organisms with a percentage of 60% across streams. In addition, Alabama streams have more snails than any place in North America. However, for a long time, there is being an issue on determining the variables that lead them to their diversity, such as shell-form variation, morphological characters, taxonomic keys unavailable, and species relationships. Despite all the species found, it is really hard to recognize each one of them due to their similarities. In order to solve that problem, she developed a pictographic catalog of morphotypes so that they can identify their variation. Currently, it is being used for all pleuroceridae in North America. Another topic she based on was “the worms that live within them”. Dr. Tolley-Jordan was able to get a worm out of a snail so we could see how they look. These parasites that look like “little insects” are considered
Snails dominated the dry biomass of free-living organisms with a percentage of 60% across streams. In addition, Alabama streams have more snails than any place in North America. However, for a long time, there is being an issue on determining the variables that lead them to their diversity, such as shell-form variation, morphological characters, taxonomic keys unavailable, and species relationships. Despite all the species found, it is really hard to recognize each one of them due to their similarities. In order to solve that problem, she developed a pictographic catalog of morphotypes so that they can identify their variation. Currently, it is being used for all pleuroceridae in North America. Another topic she based on was “the worms that live within them”. Dr. Tolley-Jordan was able to get a worm out of a snail so we could see how they look. These parasites that look like “little insects” are considered