Gastropods in the family Ellobiidae are a cryptic and easily overlooked component of intertidal habitats in South Carolina salt marshes. Recent and archived collections reveal the presence of two ellobiid species, Microtralia ovula and Creedonia succinea, which are established and occasionally abundant in the mid- to upper-intertidal zone on oyster reefs and under wrack on washed shell banks. These species are previously known to occur only in Bermuda, southern Florida, the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and Mexico. This note reports a significant northward extension of their known range and acknowledges that similar distributional shifts are being more widely recognized for estuarine benthic fauna along the US Atlantic coast.
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1 March 2007
Occurrence of Microtralia ovula and Creedonia succinea (Gastropoda: Pulmonata: Ellobiidae) in South Carolina
Julian R. Harrison,
David M. Knott
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